The Steel Guitar Forum

Hi,

I'm on the lookout for a tuner for my PSG, which I can program to ie. F# to 442,5, D# for 339 etc, so I don't have to mess with changing & remembering hz. Would be optimal if I could save different settings 1) open strings and 2)pedals down.. Any suggestions?

Best,
Alex

The Peterson Stroboplus HD is exactly what you want. It is pre-programmed with the Jeff Newman settings at 442.5. It has others such as the Newman at 440, an Emmons tuning and can be programmed for whatever offsets you want.

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

Pitch Lab Pro app for your phone.

I agree 100% with Jack and Bruce. The poor man's solution is to use PitchLabPro phone app. It's free. Although no longer supported, it's still available through the Amazon store, (but not Google Play) Then you get a Peterson PitchGrabber, which plugs into the headphone jack on your mobile phone. It works like any clip-on tuner. https://www.musiciansfriend.com/accesso ... ner-pickup PitchLabPro has options to program your own offsets for each note. Then your offset notes will read "straight up". It also displays the actual Hz and how many cents you are off. I'm told the Airyware Tuner app also lets you program offsets.

Until I sprung for a Peterson StroboPlus HD, I used PitchLabPro, and it worked well. The StroboPlus does it better, like being able to set different offsets for each F#. It has several pedal steel sweeteners already built-in, or you can program your own.

I started with a Peterson strobo flip and Sid Hudson's sweetened tuning, that worked pretty well but i moved up to their Strobo stomp HD last year.

A couple longish threads about Strobo stomp HD, which has similar capabilities to the Strobo plus HD (I think). The manual is really detailed but I skipped reading it and just connected the tuner to their website with USB cable and specified what presets/sweeteners I needed, and that's all i did.

https://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=2850342

https://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=2862452

Thanks for your replies! I'll check those out. Another though was to use a tuner that I can just (easily) change HZ on when going from string to string. Any suggestions for this solution? Preferably with the possible to tune to 1/2 a HZ ie 338,5 - does that exist?

The st-300 turbo tuner is another good option. However, it may be a little bit more work to set up than a Peterson, however they're customer support is very good and they'll help you out. Just let them know it's for pedal steel when you order. I have a custom temperament for E9, E9 pedals, C6, C6 pedals, and it works well.

Alex Jonsson wrote:Thanks for your replies! I'll check those out. Another though was to use a tuner that I can just (easily) change HZ on when going from string to string. Any suggestions for this solution? Preferably with the possible to tune to 1/2 a HZ ie 338,5 - does that exist?

I did this for awhile by changing the "calibration" up or down when tuning certain strings. My Korg tuner only had the option of full 1 Hz increments (410-480) and I used the conversion rate of 3-4 cents per Hz. But good grief, that was a ridiculous amount of work...remembering the offsets for each string (and pedal)and then having to constantly change the calibration. For the price of a cheap tuner, I found the PitchGrabber phone adapter and one of the free phone apps to be a more practical and accurate solution. In fact, at one point, I considered buying an old android phone to use explicitly for a tuner. Headphone jacks are getting scarce on new models.

Another option for obtaining PitchLab PRO for android, and one that I have used personally, is getting the APK file for an archived version. This is available online and free to download .

If you go to the website “apkpure.com” and search for “PitchLab Guitar Tuner (PRO)”, you will find a couple of archived versions. The most recent is V1.0.20, and will have the capability of custom temperment. Unlike the Peterson tuner, you won’t have the capability of individual tweaks based on octave, but that’s a small sacrifice.

I believe also that your target android device will need to have permissions set for installing unknown apps, but I’ll leave this as an exercise for the user to explore. Do a little online exploration of APK files. This worked for me just fine, but I should probably add the disclaimer to do all this at your own risk.

Does anyone know how to get the PitchLab Pro updates? They are no longer available for purchase.

Ditto on the Sonic Research Turbo Tuners. I believe that the ST-200 that I use has been replaced by newer models. But, all should work great and be more than enough for us steel players. Instant response... Bright LED display for the darkest of stages... and 100% 'actual' bypass circuitry, so the battery will last a LONG time.

https://www.turbo-tuner.com/