TC Electronic PolyTune Review

By: Faraz Chaudry

TC Electronic PolyTune

It seems everyday there is a new guitar gadget coming out promising to improve tone or employing “space-age technologies” to revolutionize the instrument. Unfortunately, these claims are more often than not a gimmicky, unoriginal take on the standard products guitarists have used for years (Jellifish Pick, anyone?) Other times the intent is to make the guitar even easier to learn, but this most often results in cheap shortcuts for the students that take years to overcome. There is one area, however, that has proved to be the last bastion of ingenuity in new products. Technologies in tuners have made keeping your guitar sounding good easier than ever. A large improvement involves the recent flurry of “headstock tuners” that utilize piezo transducers to sense vibrations in the body of the guitar, eliminating the need to unplug and re-plug into a standard tuner, or having to tell your band mates to kindly shut up.

Click to Check Out the TC Electronic Polytune Chromatic Pedal Tuner at Musician’s Friend

Unfortunately, these tuners still do not address one key problem, the meticulous process of checking string-by-string if they are in tune. And that, precisely, is where the stomp-box style TC Electronic PolyTune ($99.00, available at MusiciansFriend.com) comes into play. The PolyTune is the world’s first “polyphonic tuner,” allowing the player to strum all six strings (or four, if dealing with a bass) at once and seeing LED readouts of each individual string. This readout will then show, using green lights in a central line, or red lights either above or below that line, an accurate assessment of intonation. One can also go string by string, and it will provide a large chromatic readout with the note, and a green or red needle. There is no need to switch between chromatic or polyphonic modes, as the tuner automatically senses the pitch presence.

One main drawback guitarists may find with the tuner is that the polyphonic mode only works in standard tuning, but the accuracy and large display on the chromatic setting still makes it formidable competition for similarly priced pedal tuners. Other features include the bypass switch, which provides silent tuning and a signal cutoff for guitar swaps. The PolyTune is also equipped with a light sensor, which will adjust the LED brightness based on the ambient light, to spare your pupils during a dark show, or to shine through the sun at an outdoor gig.

The time in between songs should be used for banter and building a rapport with the audience, and tuning many times detracts from that. The TC Electronic PolyTune will allow you to strum once, see what is in tune and what isn’t, and quickly and quietly adjust. The faster you can get back to your music, the happier the audience will be. For that reason, the PolyTune is a must have for any gigging guitarist.

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