Could you recommend an electronic tuner?

[kiaya611]

I am looking to buy an electronic tuner primarily to tune my Rodgers and Conn Electronic organs, but I don't know much about them. I have always used people to tune my pianos (never used a tuning device) and now that I have a collection of electronic organs, I wanted to get a tuner to help me out (my ear is pretty good, but not good enough for me to tune an instrument with.

In any case, since I am not doing this as a profession and I don't have an endless supply of cash, I was hoping that someone could suggest something that is EASY TO USE, ACCURATE and would allow a large range (perfect would be 16hz to whatever the highest frequency is on the highest 1' or mixture...BUT I know that you pay allot more money to have ranges like that...so, I would be interested in the best of both worlds...a balance between cost ans features.

Your help is greatly appreciated.

[PeteKnobloch]

Re: Could you recommend an electronic tuner?

The tuner that I have is a Korg AT-12. I bought this from DEC about 2 years ago. This is an older unit that is powered by batteries or a small 6v plug in transformer. The size of this unit is fairly small and portable. You can adjust the calibration from + or – 50 cents and it also includes a speaker. I think they were $125 new but you should be able to pick one up for about $50 or less. I think that they have a new model that is much cheaper.

As far as being able to tune between 16Hz to ???, you don’t want to tune pipes with just the electronic tuner. Tune the middle octave and then use it to tune the rest of the pipes. This way as the organ warms up over time, the relative tune between the pipes will also track and will be in tune with each other.

[toodles]

Re: Could you recommend an electronic tuner?

I bought a Peterson Strobe tuner, used, for about $250. With a true strobe, you can tune to harmonics so a 16 Hz note with some harmonics will light up the 32 Hz pitch.

Strobes are about as easy to use as it gets. I don't know if the virtual strobes work as well.

I specifically got the strobe because I tried tuning an organ with a pitch source tuner, and had troubles with some pitches and some voices, and also I'm considering adding naturally tuned mutations (which are by far easiest to tune with a strobe).

Toodles.

[toodles]

Re: Could you recommend an electronic tuner?

It was a model 420.

Toodles.

[Guest]

Re: Could you recommend an electronic tuner?

I used a Peterson 420 for many years and found it to be accurate and easy to use. A few years ago I heard about the Reyburn Cybertuner, which is expensive but takes electronic tuning to a whole new level. Dean Reyburn, who invented the system, has a website and a demo program you can download.

[Guest]

Re: Could you recommend an electronic tuner?

FYI I'm using a Pederson VSII. The strobe is pretty good but I find the audio output with heaphones better as you don't have to be looking at it. plus it reduces the sound level. It's really loud in the chamber also you avoid pulling. I had to modify the tuner to get a decent output, though. The tuner is quite small and rugged - I've dropped it a few times.