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For electric guitars, there was a standard 1/4″ jack connection.Many copycats followed soon after, and this new category of “ handheld tuners” became the industry standard for guitar players, both electric and acoustic. While they weren’t nearly as accurate as strobe tuners…they were accurate enough…Īnd they became extremely popular because they were smaller, cheaper, and more convenient to use. In 1975, the next major advancement in guitar tuner technology came with arrival of the Korg W10. This opened up a whole new world of possibilities, which allowed for a ton of new guitar tuner designs that were cheaper and more practical for daily-use.Īnd ever since that time, these are the 8 designs that became most popular: 1. Starting in the late 70’s/early 80’s, digital technology made it possible to measure pitch with a microprocessor and display the readings on an LED/LCD screen.
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Luckily for us, today there are plenty… The 8 Categories of Guitar Tuners But for a long time, there were no other options. Of course, strobe tuners such as these aren’t ideal for guitar players, because they’re large, expensive, and require regular maintenance. Using a technology now known as “strobe tuning” this machine offered incredibly accurate pitch measurement…īy comparing the notes to an internal reference frequency using a series of light flickers and a rotating disk.Īnd while the original Stroboconns are now mainly collector’s items…the same basic technology is still used in the most accurate strobe tuners of today. Back in 1936, the Conn company released the first commercially successful instrument tuner known as the Stroboconn.
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