How accurate is the Kemper Tuner?

    Quote from Frodebro

    The part that you're overlooking is that a guitar cannot be completely in tune with itself-period. If you tweak it to be perfectly in tune for an open G chord, it's going to sound way out with an open D chord (try this yourself). Altering the fret spacing won't help, as the intervals shift with every key you play in. That's why there are "sweetened" tunings-they're a compromise so that everything sounds reasonably good.

    I'm not overlooking this. You're referring to equal tempered tuning, but that's not a guitar specific problem. In fact, every instrument known to man with fixed pitches (guitar, piano, sax, xylophone, church organ...) has this problem. But, when using a modern chromatic tuner set to equal tempered tuning (ie kempers built-in tuner?), you don't have to worry about it and tune each string spot on where it should be in this tuning, which is 1,33484x the root frequency for a fourth, instead of 1,33333. You wouldn't be able to tune this interval by ear, because 1,33484x will beat (its a few cents off), and 1,33333x wont beat, since every 3 periods of the root strings vibration the waves will coïncide (=order = consonance). Other intervals will be even more off. A violist is able to compensate for this and make sure a note doesn't beat in the context (chord or key) it's currently played, because he doesn't have fixed frets or buttons, but all the other poor musicians with frets and buttons will never experience a real perfect fifth ;)


    But that's only the maths, the theory behind it. On top of the equal tempered vs pythagorean tuning problem each instrument has a couple of practical imperfections of its own, which I'm still trying to figure out on a guitar. I think it's something to do with string tension variating between an open string and a fretted note ;) Which is why a guitar has to be intonated.


    For piano the practical problem is that the strings by itself don't behave as they mathematically should, their harmonics are not completely in tune with their root frequencies and thus, when tuning to a certain frequency, not all harmonics will coïncide. To battle this a piano tuner will tune the string so that the sum of deveation of all the harmonics including the root frequency, with the theoretical target frequency (entropy) is minimized. this will result in de higher strings being pitched multiple cents sharp and the lower strings pitched flat. This problem also happens with other tunings then equal tempered, and this problem is why a standard chromatic tuner is worthless for a piano and you are looking at pretty advanced software on a computer when you don't want to tune by ear. BTW: I had satisfying experiences with Entropy Tuner, which can only do equal tempered due to it's calculation methods. But it's the only free piano tuner :D


    And of course a guitar's frets are fixed to equal tempered tuning, while a piano can be tuned in pythagorean tuning or something else, if you want to get that funky about intonation and tuning ;)


    EDIT: fixed my calculations ;)

    Both modes are more accurate than I need and the strobe mode is good enough to use for intonation too.


    However I don't often use the remote in the house so I tend to just use the tuner lights on the device that are always active in every mode to avoid needing to get up and turn the dial.

    I tune my strings to up to 4 cents from the other. I look at the cents more than I do the bubble or strobe. The Kemper tuner works well for specific individual tuning. So plenty accurate for me.

    Larry Mar @ Lonegun Studios. Neither one famous yet.

    Quote from dave5150

    However I don't often use the remote in the house so I tend to just use the tuner lights on the device that are always active in every mode to avoid needing to get up and turn the dial.

    Yup, even those indicator lights get you into the ballpark very-well IMHO.


    Honestly, I use them all the time and only go the full monty when adjusting intonation.

    Tuning is overrated. I’ve just heard the isolated guitar parts for Bruce Spingsteen’s Born In The USA 😳😳😳😳 The guitar was probably tuned to perfection on a high end Peterson strobe tuner. All that goes out the window if you batter it to death with your pick hand and squash the neck like a python with your other 😮

    I wouldn't call it overrated - it just doesn't seem to matter much to most guitar players. YouTube is glaring evidence of that. I've always put a premium on it. Tried to learn all the little maintenance stuff I could about nuts and bridges and frets to help the guitar stay in tune. Then you have to learn to tune to your playing style and learn how to play the instrument in tune. I have an old school Peterson 450 strobe tuner that I have had since the late 80s. I have found the Kemper strobe tuner to be so reliable I use it for everything now including setting intonation.


    All that goes out the window if your guitar parts are buried under bass and keys and sax.

    I'm just thrilled to have a display. For YEARS I tuned onstage using only the 3 lights (like under the Kemper chicken head knob) on a KORG GA-1 tuner velcro'd to the front of my rack. Worked fine.