Last month, I thought I lost my clip-on guitar tuner. And of course, like the rational person that I am, instead of exerting a little more effort to find it, I thought it would be better to go to the mall and get myself a new one. So, I went to the nearest Audiophile store to look for the Pitchclip. These things sell REALLY fast. The first time I saw one in the store, there was a huge pile on display. That pile didn’t last long and took a while before the stocks got replenished. I felt lucky to find one when I actually needed. And it was green!
It’s not hard to understand why these little things are popular. Korg has always been a trusted brand when it comes to reasonably priced musical instrument tuners. But when reasonably priced turns to crazy cheap (relative to the competition, at least), you potentially have a winning formula.
So I took my new green Pitchclip home and wasted no time testing it in one of my guitars. The excitement gradually faded when the thing started struggling to track certain strings. I mean, it’s not that bad, really. But I started to think if it was a good idea for Korg to risk a bit of a dip in their reputation here.
Tracking can get erratic at times.
Maybe a week after I bought the Pitchclip, I was surprised to find my old tuner buried deep in one of my backpack’s pockets. In hindsight, spending an extra 5 minutes to search that bag in the first place would have saved me 600 Pesos. But that would have been no fun, no? And it wouldn’t have made the ensuing comparison test possible. I can now determine if the Pitchclip is actually any better (or worse) than my older tuner.
The other tuner is a Musedo T-40C, which I bought nearly two years ago from Lyric for somewhere between 700-800 Pesos. I know nothing about the brand and have to keep reading the tuner’s label to remember the model. But I bought it because my first choice at the time, which was, surprise surprise, the Pitchclip, was unavailable. So, I went to another store to look for my second choice, the Snark SN-1/SN-2. They didn’t have it on stock either. So I was resigned to browsing through their display shelf and hope I saw something decent. It was there that I found the Musedo.
The Musedo T-40C has a rather fancy colored LCD display and can be set for tuning various instruments. The tuning modes don’t interest me much as the tuner is always set to chromatic. What I want to test the accuracy and tracking of my tuners. In the end, these are all that matter, really.
A few things struck me in this particular test. It is no longer apparent in the video as the strings were already in tune (well, for the most part, at least). But while you’re actually tuning, the Pitchclip is the one which has the most difficulty in tracking pitch, especially with the wounded strings (you can see it somewhat when I plucked the 6th string). Of course, one can say that it’s expected. But having those LED’s doing a Cylon impression is something I rarely see from my previous Korg tuners. The next thing that I noticed was that after it settles down, the Pitchclip is fairly consistent with the Pitchblack’s own readings. I can’t gauge actual accuracy, but both tuners do allude to the same ballpark area of sharpness or flatness. You’re certainly getting that Korg accuracy with the Pitchclip.
The Musedo T-40C doesn’t seem to be as sensitive as both Korg units. The reading also seems to lock in a certain range of whatever note is being tuned. Obviously, this could compromise accuracy. But I wonder if that is such a bad thing. If you look at the video clip, the readings are really close to each other. A hyper accurate tuner, at first glance, will always seem to be the best thing to have. But when the reality of your practical needs sets in, you start to think twice about it. That fancy strobe tuner is great of setting up your guitar. But for most purposes, personally, I’d rather spend 15 seconds for adequate tuning rather than 5 minutes for perfect tuning. Why bother? Pitch is never going to be perfect as you play up and down the fretboard, anyway.
I still like the Musedo a bit more and it will remain my go-to tuner. But after this test, I realized that the Pitchclip is actually better than I first thought. It held its own against its bigger brother, the Pitchblack. It takes longer to stabilize, but it gets there. When the green LED in the middle lights up, I can always trust the Korg Pitchclip.