The Steel Guitar Forum

Benjamin, are you sure it doesn't have sweetened settings for pedal steel? Their web site list Steel guitar as one of the instruments it has sweetened tunings for.

https://www.petersontuners.com/products/stroboclip/

I'd like to check one out. One thing it doesn't seem to have an way to use AC power instead of the battery. I'd like to keep the tuner on the whole time I'm playing, and the clip on I have for my 6 string goes through batteries pretty quick. Normally after I tune the guitar, I turn the clip on off.

Gerald Shaw wrote:Benjamin, are you sure it doesn't have sweetened settings for pedal steel? Their web site list Steel guitar as one of the instruments it has sweetened tunings for.

https://www.petersontuners.com/products/stroboclip/

I'd like to check one out. One thing it doesn't seem to have an way to use AC power instead of the battery. I'd like to keep the tuner on the whole time I'm playing, and the clip on I have for my 6 string goes through batteries pretty quick. Normally after I tune the guitar, I turn the clip on off.

I got excited about that too but if you expand the steel guitar section of that list it only has sweetened tunings for A6 and C6 lap steel guitar.

I will be clipping it on and leaving it there the whole time, but it's got a nice little button which is easy enough to turn on and off and it's not like it's out of reach

This Strobo-Clip is so great for pedal steel guitar, you guys gotta try one...man it really should have a sweetened tuning for pedal steel though it's got a bunch of others but none for pedal steel, bit of a downer that Still, fantastic unit and perfect for the pedal steel I think especially if it had those sweetened tunings included.

The little Snark clip-on tuner works great for me. I've tried it clipped to the key-head, but results are much better clipped to a rear leg, either left or right works well. Can't speak to its display of cents, since I just use it to tune my E's, then do the rest by ear.

b0b wrote:Do any of the clip-on tuners show cents sharp/flat? All the ones I've seen assume equal temperament is "in tune".

The Snark dial reads sharp and flat of A440 (or whtever you set it at). I do my own "sweetening" on the fly. My E9 is not complicated: everything pretty much straight up open, then third and sixth (G#-A) raises just a tad flat.

Snark chromatic here on rear apron of my Emmons Legrande SD & it seems to do fine. Like others I've talked to,I just tune my E strings with it.

There are at least 2 'sweetened' tunings for the Pedal Steel. I am using 'MA9' which is 'Mickey Adams' E9th'... jury is still out.

In order to get them I hooked the stroboclip up to the usb connector on my PC and went to the Peterson website to run the update/customize program.

b0b wrote:Do any of the clip-on tuners show cents sharp/flat? All the ones I've seen assume equal temperament is "in tune".

For awhile, I was using my Korg clip-on for both steel and guitar. It does show unmarked gradations for sharp and flat, but it's kind of guesswork. The work-around is to utilize the "Calibration" button. You can roughly figure 4 cents for every 1Hz flat or sharp of 440. For instance, I would tune the E's and B's straight up, then re-calibrate to 437 and tune my G#s "straight up" to 437. While not perfect, it got me a lot closer than ET. Sure was a pain though.

To answer the original question, yes, clip-on tuners will function on a pedal steel, but are a pain because they aren't calibrated for sweetened tunings.

For the price of a cheap guitar tuner ($15), you can buy a Peterson PitchGrabber pickup which clips to the leg of the steel. Plug it into your smart-phone and use the free PitchLab Pro app which can be configured with personal sweeteners. In fact, now that I'm using a Peterson StroboPlus HD, I still use the clip-on pickup rather than mess with an extra cable in my signal chain.