Which tuner to trust ?

[Alicia Willis]

Okay so obviously I can tell by ear when something is way out of tune, but not the subtleties.

my issues is, my acoustic !
I have an ovation celebrity that has a built in tuner. I can tune it with that and everything’s kosher, but then if I check behind it with my chromatic tuner pedal it’s a bit off

so which do I trust ? The built in tuner or the pedal tuner?

 

[Ezequiel Romanko]

i don't really know, if you tuned it with the built in tuner and it's sounds good, you should use it like that. if don't use the pedal tuner,
may be Captain @Ed Seith can help you on this

 

[Ed Seith]

Your ear should be the decider, but if it's not, the pedal is probably more accurate.

 

[Calvin Phillips]

Do the string test

Does 5 e match a? Does 5a match d? Etc. That's my tell a tale sign.

 

[Rute Rodrigues]

Probably you should trust the pedal, I had that problem some time ago too, and a friend of mine told me that the pedal is more accurate

 

[idssdi]

It could very well be that the tuner in your guitar uses 430 Hz or something and your pedal tuner uses 440 Hz. Neither of them are wrong it's just that most music is tuned to 440 Hz(except some old stuff like Django Reinhardt and Jimi Hendrix which are in 430 Hz or so). I would use the pedal tuner when you want to play along to music, if you just play it won't matter that much.

 

[Alicia Willis]

Your ear should be the decider, but if it's not, the pedal is probably more accurate.

I dont trust my ear enough just quite yet
I assumed the pedal would be a bit more accurate but wasn’t sure. Thanks Ed !!!

 

[Andrew Milner]

You'll get there in time with your ear. When in doubt, use the tuner in your pedal. I sometimes also use online tuners when I am too lazy to power up the one I have at home.

 

[Christopher Lonski]

I agree with Ed that, ultimately, you should let your ear decide- regardless of whether your ear is developed or not. The big lesson there is to start trusting your ear and not doubt yourself so much. The accuracy will come with time.

Also, trust this tuner----> https://www.turbo-tuner.com/

Quite possibly the most accurate tuner on the market. It's crazy how sensitive much better this thing is to you average tuner. Strobe tuners in general are as accurate as it gets and if you haven't been turned on to strobe tuners, you're seriously missing out. We all know that ear training is one of the most important things to do in music. When your ear is constantly hearing a guitar that is as perfectly in tune as you can get it, your ear starts noticing those subtle changes much more easily and you can REALLY hear when something is a little out of pitch. Using a strobe tuner, and specifically the Turbo Tuner, has fined tuned and improved my ear immensely. Give it a shot.

 

[Kai C]

@Alicia Willis I don't know why, but I check with an open G chord and can tell if I'm fucked up on tuning. Fender has a free tuning app for phones and I use that to get into tune. And as @Calvin Phillips said you can verify on the 5th frets (4th for b string), which is how I check. That's just what I do. My teacher has this expensive Peterson strobo+ fine tuner, but he got it just because he was bored. Before he got that tuner he was doing this thing of checking matching vibrations off the natural harmonics. TBH I still don't understand how he did that.