TC Electronic Polytune stomp box tunes guitars in one pass

A new $99 tuner promises to tune all your guitar strings at once.

Possible? Of course it is.

Tuning one string at a time is too slow during a performance. It’s embarrassing to watch an singer try to stall with a lame joke while he/she is looking down tuning their guitar between songs.

The Gibson Robot Guitar tunes all six strings at once and does it well.

TC Helicon are about to ship – – February 18, 2010 – the latest in guitar tuners.

No only does it tell you which strings are out when you strum the guitar, it will narrow down tuning to one string once you find which ones are sharp or flat.

There are a few reviews out there and the are mainly positive.

It’s very quick in use, with no skitting, and it’s accurate too – TC is claiming +/- 1 cent compared with Boss’s +/-3 for the TU-2 (the new TU-3 will be +/- 1 cent). The PT will also work with four-, five- and six-string basses, though if you’re using a capo or altered tunings you can only use the regular chromatic, single-string mode.

Polyphonic mode only works with standard intervals in either E, Eb , D, C#, C or B (down tune only). But perhaps the presence of the USB port on the pedal hints at software updates down the line.

The PolyTune is a genuine step forward for pedal tuners. It won’t satisfy sweetened tuning fans, yet what the vast majority of people want the vast majority of the time is to simply tune quickly and silently between songs.

Were it a straight automatic chromatic tuner it would be good, but by adding the polyphonic mode for an instant view of all six strings, it becomes an undoubted winner at a very reasonable price. Highly recommended. Music Radar

Musicians Friend – $99