What's good in the world of tuner pedals at the moment? Buffered?

chromatuna

I am rebuilding my pedal board after a year or so of inactivity and I thought I would give the Boss TU-3 tuner another go. Excellent tuner but that 2.2 meg ohm buffer is soooo bright and rather sterile to my ears. After a fair bit of time comparing it just doesn't sound as good as the Fredric K type one I have. I have considered just using my headstock tuner but I think I would prefer a pedal again for live work. Maybe a mini? What would folks recommend? Are there any with good buffers or is it best to go for hard bypass and stick with the K type? 

skunkwerx

If you like the boss, the Waza craft version has a selectable buffer so you can turn it off. But its £130...

english_bob

I've been very pleased with the TC Polytunes I have (my pedalboard has a Mini, I also have a full size one that lives with my acoustic). Not that expensive, accurate, reliable, stable, and the polyphonic feature is really useful for quick tuning checks as long as you use standard tuning or a variation- eg. tuning a semitone flat., or drop D. You can't "teach" it to recognize alternative tunings in polyphonic mode. 

The latest full size Polytune has a switchable buffer. The Mini is true bypass. I'd say if you already have a buffer you like there's no particular reason to seek out a buffered tuner.

My only complaint is that with the Polytune on (both of mine do this) it outputs some noise if it isn't on an isolated PSU- just a bit of background "rumble", not particularly noticeable unless you're really loud. It went away when I started using my True Tone CS7 PSU.

Maynehead

Polytune 3

I’ve just sold my Polytune 2 to upgrade to the 3. Why? Because it had the TC Bonafide Buffer built in, which is a very transparent and high quality buffer. Even better sounding than the Klon buffer I was using before. Plus having the buffer in the tuner is ideal if your tuner is first in the chain. It’s also switchable to true bypass if desired.

The tuner functionality is great too.

Bebopper

My Polytune is currently on a friend's board for an international tour so I won't be seeing it for a while. I've got my eye on the new Peterson StroboStomp HD that just launched at NAMM. Switchable buffer. $129US
https://www.petersontuners.com/products/stroboStompHD/