StroboPLUS HD Review
By Francois Ouellette on Sunday, May 9, 2021
Edited on Sunday, May 9, 2021
Verified Purchase
Reviewed on
Peterson Website
Plays 6 String Lap Steel, Mandolin, Dobro® / Resonator Guitar, Ukulele, Tenor Ukulele, Octave Mandolin, 6-String Electric Guitar, 6-String Acoustic Guitar
A BIG step up from the common guitar and instruments tuners, and a very good modelization of the desktop mechanical strobe tuner.
The Connect feature is very useful, but it has a few quirks that are not clearly documented. Like, when you add your very first sweetener, it removes all sweeteners that are already in the tuner's memory from the factory reset! It's OK because you can then pick and load those that you really need from your custom library and easily manage the pre-sets from the computer too. Also, when you make a minor change to one of the tunings or pre-set, it's not obvious how you re-sync your tuner with the configuration on your computer. Other than that, a great device. I added my own tunings for a few instruments that were not there, namely the Irish bouzouki (GDAD) and Persian santur with the G-minor scale. For the latter we can easily get any subtle variation for "half-flat" notes if required.
People who complain about the tuner on the various blogs or on YouTube usually never worked with a strobe tuner before, or do not understand how the "sweetening" works. For example, we see complaints about not seeing the cents variations from the target note; well, with a strobe, you aim for the exact note and if you need a +/- cents variation, you set it before doing your tuning, or include it in a sweetener.
This tuner is very useful to tune accordion reeds with 2 or more voices, in order to get a consistent "wet" sound using the sweetener function.
All in all, the best next thing to a mechanical strobe in a small, convenient package.
The Connect feature is very useful, but it has a few quirks that are not clearly documented. Like, when you add your very first sweetener, it removes all sweeteners that are already in the tuner's memory from the factory reset! It's OK because you can then pick and load those that you really need from your custom library and easily manage the pre-sets from the computer too. Also, when you make a minor change to one of the tunings or pre-set, it's not obvious how you re-sync your tuner with the configuration on your computer. Other than that, a great device. I added my own tunings for a few instruments that were not there, namely the Irish bouzouki (GDAD) and Persian santur with the G-minor scale. For the latter we can easily get any subtle variation for "half-flat" notes if required.
People who complain about the tuner on the various blogs or on YouTube usually never worked with a strobe tuner before, or do not understand how the "sweetening" works. For example, we see complaints about not seeing the cents variations from the target note; well, with a strobe, you aim for the exact note and if you need a +/- cents variation, you set it before doing your tuning, or include it in a sweetener.
This tuner is very useful to tune accordion reeds with 2 or more voices, in order to get a consistent "wet" sound using the sweetener function.
All in all, the best next thing to a mechanical strobe in a small, convenient package.
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