PolyTune Clip Tuner Review by Carl Brown – TC Electronic
I am sure many of you guys have tried the now large number of clip-on tuners available on the market. It seems that there has been a flood of them in the past few years and you will see many well known guitar players with a clip-on tuner attached to their guitar headstock.
TC Electronic sent my their latest tuner to try out, the PolyTune Clip. It is modeled after their very popular PolyTune pedal which enables you to strum all of the strings on your guitar at once and quickly see a digital rendering of all the strings telling you which ones are flat or sharp. It worked remarkably well with the pedal but I was curious as to whether they could fit all of that technology into a clip-on tuner.
As I was unboxing the tuner the first thing that struck me was how solid it felt. Extremely high quality housing without the typical flimsy plastic feel. I secured it to my guitar's headstock and I was once again surprised at how well the tuner's clip mechanism was built. I would have no worries taking it out on stage.
Now for the tuning, which is what we are here for. There are a few different tuning modes. The first mode is just the basic digital tuner where you pick each string one at a time. The PolyTune Clip tracks very fast making fast accurate tuning a breeze. I then clicked on one of the bottom buttons to throw the tuner into strobe tuner mode. As you may know, strobe tuning is probably the most accurate way of tuning a guitar with an electric tuner. I couldn't believe they were able to get such a high quality and extremely accurate strobe tuner into this little guy, really amazing stuff.
But by far the biggest feature that sets this clip-on tuner apart from others is it's polyphonic tuning mode. No need to hit any additional buttons, the PolyTune Clip will automatically switch between polyphonic and standard tuning mode depending on whether you hit a single string or strum all of them together.
Once again the tuner does a fantastic job of sensing all of the strings simultaneously without acting sluggish. The great thing about this is because you can throw this tuner on all guitar types, acoustic, steel string, nylon string and eclectic, you can use it on all your guitars. In addition you can have the volume down on your electric then silently tune since the PolyTune Clip simply uses the note vibrations to tune your guitar.
If you are a guitarist running around the stage you will no longer have to mute your guitar or come back to your pedalboard to tune. All you need to do is turn your volume down and click on the tuner and start silently tuning no matter where you are on stage. The tuner will even turn off by itself within a couple minutes to save your battery life so one less the to think about!
You can tune to over a dozen different tunings in polyphonic mode so you wont be stuck in standard tuning when using the polyphonic mode.
All-in-all, I have a new favorite tuner. This PolyTune Clip has been attached to my nylon string classical during all of my daily practice sessions since the first day I got it. It is almost second nature using it by now. For anyone looking for highly accurate, fast tuner that doesn't require you to ruin the flow of your practice sessions or live gigs, I highly recommend the PolyTune Clip from TC Electronic.
Carl...
If these free lessons help you, please donate to keep new ones coming daily. Thanks!! 🙂