Tuning Meters - Any Thoughts?

[wes williams]

Paul Groff has mentioned his interest in pitch and temperament on a thread in General Discussion Forum, which has spurred me to try to get a tuning meter. I've been unsucessful in the past in trying to find one to do this kind of job. Any ideas or comments?

[Stephen Chambers]

I've been using a Yamaha PT-4 for more than 25 years now. But it is a serious "instrument", designed for professional use by piano tuners, and cost a fortune back then.

 

Also, they are not generally available.

Edited May 8, 2004 by Stephen Chambers

[Paul Groff]

Wes,

 

I always end up checking all the intervals by ear, at a variety of playing pressures, all across the instrument. In some instruments, certain types of discords ("wolf intervals") are intentional, and as important as the degree of purity of the concordant intervals. But I really like my Korg "Master Tune," a very accurate and flexible machine of the galvanometer (needle gauge) type. As with any tool, you have to become familiar with it and to find the best (and most reproducible) ways to use it. You want to check its calibration. If I could find (and afford) a better machine I wouldn't hesitate to switch, but with care mine does the job.

 

Recording the tuning of a concertina (especially an antique one as it goes through stages of repair to functionality, cleaning, and restoration) is not like measuring a handful of bolts with a micrometer, more like taking the pulses of a roomful of cats. It can be done but the situation is dynamic and there are many opportunities for imprecision and error. I suspect the best that any of us can hope is that we develop a way that is consistent for us, and that charts produced by different researchers may not be exactly commensurable in detail. Still, the overall pattern of the temperament may be apparent, so I welcome charts that others have made, even if they are sometimes difficult to compare with mine. I have tried to be very modest in my claims and assumptions, to study as many instruments as possible, and to try to understand the rationale of the anglo temperaments in view of the ways in which the instruments were played.

 

Paul

Edited May 8, 2004 by Paul Groff

[Ken_Coles]

I have a Peterson strobe meter. It is not the latest model, but is a 400 or a 400 and something.

 

I got it relatively cheap (compared the the $200-400 US cost of a new one) at an antique radio collector's meet. $60 I think. I checked it with accordion builder Larry Miller's strobe and several pitch generators and it is within about one cent of correct. It's a little slower to use than a needle meter (you have to turn dials) but is fun for a tinkerer like me.

[Bob Tedrow]

I use my 30 year old Conn Strobotuner now. My fancypanty Peterson is broken.

 

Bob

[Alan Day]

I have been very pleased with my Korg Tuner made by KEIO Electronics Lab,Corp

Tokio Japan Model Wt- 10A, battery operated, or power, with chromatic dial.

It can be set to any Frequency and has two sound settings and a meter setting to check the sound against the meter.I have had this many years now but it is a superb tool for tuning.

I do not know if it is still made but I would recommend one.

Al

[Tassie Devil]

I've just bought the current model Korg chromatic tuner - a CA-30 for about Aus$60 (I already had a guitar tuner, but wanted a chromatic when the concertina arrived). It's a small battery powered unit with its own internal microphone, a speaker to play the notes, an analog style digital readout, and also has the ability to tune to different pitches.

Its very easy to use - just turn it on and play the note. You get a precise readout from the screen and a more general red/green led indicator (which can be seen from a distance) to show if you are hi or low on a particular note.

These things really spoil you!

[Chris Ghent]

I have a Korg AT-12, a slightly older model, which I bought off Ebay for around US$80. I think a large display is good, and I find the analogue needle on the AT-12 much easier to use than the digital display on my son's guitar tuner. It tells me the note it is hearing, (C, C#, D etc) and the octave (3210123) and how many cents flat or sharp, and it is easy to read to within a cent. It has an internal mic but will accept an external one, and is battery and mains powered. You can adjust the pitch also, ie. A=however many hertz you want.

 

Chris

[Paul Read]

After a considerable amount of research, I concluded that the Peterson strobes are the most accurate tuners around. I bought a Peterson Virtual strobe that is reported to have an accuracy of +- 0.1 cents whereas the digital ones are +- 2 cents.

 

I still use my old seiko chromatic as it is good for getting into the ballpark fast then fine tune with the Peterson. I've been very pleased with it. With the other type, two adjacent notes could be as much as four cents out relative to each other. Some people would hear this, some not.

 

The note sounded is dependent to some extent on the pressure applied so tuning is definitlely something of an art and trying to tune to the normal playing pressure. This in itself is subject to the induvidual player.

 

These Peterson virtual strobes are reasonably priced (compared to real strobes) although significantly more than the less acurate digitals. I have been very pleased with mine.

[A.D. Homan]

After a considerable amount of research, I concluded that the Peterson strobes are the most accurate tuners around.

 

 

I've also been using a "virtual strobe," too. For use as an accordion or concertina tuner, if alternate temperments are your thing, their "V-SAM" is recommended over their "VS-II" (or earlier VS-I). All Peterson Virtual Strobe tuners include a variety of temperments in their presets and also allow you to program a couple of temperments. However, the relevant added feature on the V-SAM is that you can also adjust the temperment root, which is useful for tuning melodeons and concertinas, where a given tempered scale is not necessarily rooted in C. Adjustable temperment roots are not featured by the VS-I or VS-II.

 

As you play a note on the instrument, you can also turn the knob on the tuner to see how many cents sharp or flat the note is from the target, with accuracy to .1 cent, as noted by the post above. The Peterson website provides charts that are useful for reference.

 

The disadvantage of "virtual strobe" tuners over "true" strobe tuners (also made by Peterson) is that the virtual strobe tuners do not "hear" the overtones, whereas some true strobe tuners would allow you to figure out specific overtones produced by a reed. For this reason, virtual strobes are not recommended for piano tuners, but for accordion/concertina tuners, the overtones may not be of as much importance, unless you experimenting with different reeds, different profiles, etc., in which case you might need a more sophisticated "true" strobe tuner, which would really be overkill for most of us...

 

As far as screen visibility goes, this seems to be a common complaint about these tuners. There are two brightness settings. It seems to be a matter of personal preference, but I'll add that the screen is considerably more visible when viewed from an angle, from above, then from directly in front of it. It also takes a bit of time to get used to the "virtual strobe" display, but once you get the hang of it it's wonderful.

 

It's a really neat piece of technology, and if more free-reed people use it, and let Peterson know how we are using it, perhaps they will consider developing more features that we would find useful (such as real-time frequency readout, rather than only "cents" above or below a target frequency.)

[Chris Timson]

I'm not interested in tuning reeds, but I still find a use for a tuning tool simply to help me determine exactly what I have in my hands when I pick up a new anglo. For this decidedly non-professional use the PhonTuner program for Pocket PC devices does the job admirably and only costs a few dollars.

 

Chris

[Alan Day]

To Paul and A.D Homan(sorry I do not know your Christian name)

I am interested to know with the accuracy of the tuners you have, can you detect differences in tuning temperature movement eg cold day one reading hot day another? I have always suspected that there is a difference but never been able to prove it.

Sorry for going off at a tangent.

Al

[A.D. Homan]

To Paul and A.D Homan(sorry I do not know your Christian name)

I am interested to know with the accuracy of the tuners you have, can you detect differences in tuning temperature movement eg cold day one reading hot day another? I have always suspected that there is a difference but never been able to prove it.

Sorry for going off at a tangent.

Al

Hi Al,

 

Sorry, I forgot to put my name at the end of the post -- it's Andy.

 

Yes, a virtual strobe with 0.1 cent accuracy would certainly detect if there are any changes exceeding 0.1 cent. I've never tried to track changes due to weather -- it's an interesting idea; you could track the tuning on a concertina every day for a year, and correllate the results with precise temperature, air pressure, and humidity readings -- a lot of work, but not too difficult if the topic fascinates you.

 

Personally, I'm curious about the pitch differences under various degrees of bellows pressure. I also think that for purposes of tuning, as long as the tuning device is within 2 cents (high-end needle tuners), you are probably in good shape (but not optimal) -- so the cheapest tuners, with 5 cent margin of error due to non-realtime pitch determination, are not appropriate for tuning except by technicians with extremely well trained ears! For the kinds of study suggested by various readers of this forum, I think that tuners of higher accuracy should be sought.

 

-Andy

[JimLucas]

[i also think that for purposes of tuning, as long as the tuning device is within 2 cents (high-end needle tuners), you are probably in good shape (but not optimal)...

I was once asked to stop playing by a violinist, because my concertina was tuned to A441, not A440.

... But she was an exception.

[Ivan Viehoff]

I sacked a piano tuner once because he persistently left my piano with tuning errors that I could hear - and my ear is not particularly sensitive. He was particularly prone to leaving one of the three strings faintly out of tune with the other two. I merely observe that he used an autotuner rather than traditional methods.

 

Personally I don't expect concertinas to be perfectly in tune. It is part of their charm, like Bob Dylan.

[JimLucas]

Personally I don't expect concertinas to be perfectly in tune.  It is part of their charm, like Bob Dylan.

Bob Dylan is part of the concertina's charm?

... I never knew!

[d.elliott]

I have a £100+ Seiko meter, selected for its accuracy and its 1st class analogue display.

 

I read somewhere that most people cannot distiguish between two or three cents, if this is true then a meter accuracy of +/- say 1.5, or to be safe, say, +/-1.0 cents acceptable. To do this the instrument has to be resolving to at least 1/5th of a cent. Yet on a baritone lower notes I have the differences in air pressure giving over 5 cents variation on the tuning rig.

 

The meter accuracy and precision is not the determining factor in tuning accuracy. How many times have the other tuners seen an instrument that is generally say 2 cents flat at the lower end and perhaps 1 or two cents sharp at the upper end?

 

Dave

[wes williams]

Thanks All,

 

From all your recommendations, I think I'm going to try a Korg CA30 to see if its up to it. At around 20 UKP it won't be a great loss if it isn't. I'll let you know how I get on. But please continue with your suggestions, as its throwing up lots of things that need to be considered along the way.... pressure, temperature, etc

 

best wishes ..wes