The Steel Guitar Forum

I've been using the Clear Tune app on my iPhone and think it's great. I entered Jeff Newman's tuning values and have been happy with how it works for me.

But, as a few others have noted, the Android version of Clear Tune does not offer the option of setting your own custom temperaments. The Clear Tune folks say this is because Google's changes to the hardware buttons in Android. Clear Tune may do a workaround in the future but they don't know if/when. For now, if you're using Clear Tune in the latest version of Android you're limited to the temperament presets in the app.

I emailed the folks at Clear Tune and asked if they'd be willing to add an E9 temperament and also a C6 temperament preset to their current list of presets in the app. They thought that sounded doable. I forwarded them this link as an example: http://www.jeffran.com/tuning.php

But I also said I'd bounce the topic off the forum.

Listen, I'm no music theory expert - I'm just a guy who wants Clear Tune to work on his Nexus 7 the way it does with his iPhone.

So -- without this devolving into some loopy music/math wizard fight -- is that Jeff Newman temperament pretty much the standard?

If so, anyone care to summarize it for me in +/- cents for each note affected? I'll pass it along to Clear Tune if so.

i don't have any of your modern electronic devices, but i think the newman chart is a 'good starting point' for the masses. from there though, each steel has it's little differences that should require some fine tuning on your own personal steel.

so being able to program your own settings would be a good thing.

While it WOULD be nice to program your own,
IT IS NOT HARD to just leave the tuner on ET, and use a written list of values and tune it to be so many cents flat or sharp. It's how we ALL did it before programmable tuners became available.
I STILL recall most of the values:
F#:+4
G: don't recall
G#:-8
A:-4
A#: don't recall
B:+4
C:-6
C#:-17
D:-8
D#-4
E:0

So you only point the needle to 0 for the Es.
And only some tuners can't program their own, other androids can.

To answer the actual question you asked, the Newman values are close, but because cabinet drop will change things, it's wiser to: tune by ear, checking and noting the values of each note; writing them down to create your own chart.
If you have more than one steel, you'll find that each guitar wants subtly different values.

Download Pitchlab for androids. You can set your own temperaments for each string. Works very well for me, there are many styles of tuning on there. There is also a strobe, not sure how accurate but it has been great for me.