Planet Waves PW-CT-11 Tru-Strobe Tuner- any good?

Dave_Mc

Hi everyone,

I see Thomann seems to be blowing out this tuner for ~£35. I'm in need (I think!) of an accurate (strobe?) tuner so I can set intonation etc.- should have got one ages ago but never got round to it, as usual.

Are there any known problems with this tuner? I figure I can't go too far wrong for £35, the Korg Pitchblack Plus is double that and the Turbo Tuner is triple that, even from the USA. So anything similar seems to cost a lot more (unless there's something I'm not aware of (new) which is similarly accurate and cheap, in which case let me know!)- but obviously if the Planet Waves has some fatal flaw I'm not aware of then that would put me off.

Thanks for your help,
Dave

guitargeek62

Oooh, that's cheap! I'd been planning on getting a Polytune 2 as it's got the strobe function too for setups etc, but that is tempting...

Dave_Mc

Yeah I bet by the time I get round to doing anything about this tomorrow it'll have sold out as everyone here will have bought one. )

ThePrettyDamned

That is cheap...

I use a pitch black and it's fine for intonation to be honest. So no doubt this one will be even better.

crunchman

I'm not sure whether getting a mega-accurate tuner for intonation is worth the money.  I know I tend to press a bit hard at times when I'm fretting strings.  I'm better now, but in the past I could hear it going sharp at times.  Given that it is dependent on how hard you fret the string, I think any decent tuner will get you close enough that your fretting technique will become the most important factor.

HAL9000

I've found an iPad App called n-Track Tuner which is very accurate (certainly more so than my floor tuner) and certainly good enough for setting intonation. Best of all it's free.

Karlos

HAL9000 said:

I've found an iPad App called n-Track Tuner which is very accurate (certainly more so than my floor tuner) and certainly good enough for setting intonation. Best of all it's free.

I use the TC PolyTune app on my iPhone when I'm noodling around on the sofa unplugged. Seems to work fine. Can't remember if or how much it cost.

http://www.tcelectronic.com/polytune-iphone-app/

mart

It seems to get lots of good reviews, and the bad ones are complaints about it not lasting - the display seems to be the main problem there. 

But I have a recollection of reading that this is not actually a strobe tuner, just a digital tuner like any other, but with the output displayed in such a way as to look like a strobe tuner. Having said that, I now can't find anyone on the web saying this, so it may just be my flakey memory.

Dave_Mc

^ Now that you mention it I have a vague recollection of reading something like that, too, though I can't remember which tuner it was about. ) I'm guessing that for £35, even if it's not strobe (but still accurate) it's worth it, but I'll bear that in mind and do some digging, thanks

ThePrettyDamned said:

That is cheap...

I use a pitch black and it's fine for intonation to be honest. So no doubt this one will be even better.

Yeah I mean you might well not need ridiculous levels of accuracy, but I'm kind of scared of touching the intonation before I get a better tuner in case what I already have isn't accurate enough and if it's not then I'm up the creek )

crunchman said:

I'm not sure whether getting a mega-accurate tuner for intonation is worth the money.  I know I tend to press a bit hard at times when I'm fretting strings.  I'm better now, but in the past I could hear it going sharp at times.  Given that it is dependent on how hard you fret the string, I think any decent tuner will get you close enough that your fretting technique will become the most important factor.

Yeah that's possible. That's one of the reasons why I've held off so long on getting the turbo tuner, I'm kind of scared I don't need it. This one at £35 is cheap enough that even if I don't need it it's not the end of the world, and is hopefully way better than I already have.

HAL9000 said:

I've found an iPad App called n-Track Tuner which is very accurate (certainly more so than my floor tuner) and certainly good enough for setting intonation. Best of all it's free.

Not when I don't have an IPad )

Thanks for the help, everyone

Dodge

I've got one - they're fine.  Really well built and accurate enough for me.

Dave_Mc

Thanks

Yeah I've ordered it. Might be a while till it gets here, one of the other things in my order was out of stock.