PRODUCT REVIEW
PolyTune
TC Electronic
By JoRdAn WAGnER
eventually morphing into a green line indicating
it was in tune. Guitarists who play live will absolutely love this feature, as it quickly tells them
which string is out of tune without having to
waste time trying to find it one by one.
How many times have you been playing a set
of chords to a tune and hearing one note in the
passage that just sounds a little sour compared
to the rest? The only way to know for sure which
one is to check all of the strings at once, which is
time-consuming and frustrating onstage. In addition, many players (including myself) have relied
on one tuner for years at a time. Even the most
discontent gearheads among us—those who
trade pedals the way others exchange sports
cards—have likely stuck with one reliable tuner
that’s been expected to last in its pedalboard
location. In short, it would take the prospect of
a very big improvement to kick the most used
pedal on the board to the proverbial curb. Enter
the TC Electronic Poly Tune, which aims to do
just that. Dubbed the world’s first polyphonic
tuner, the Poly Tune enables you to tune not just
one string at a time, but detect tuning discrepancies in every string at once.
the other hand, has always been the one thing
I’ve hardly ever thought about changing. Now
that I think about it, I’m pretty sure I’ve traded
it out only two or three times—which is nothing
compared to the countless delays and overdrives I’ve gone through over the years. Does
the Poly Tune qualify to be a rare entry in that
list of tuners? Most definitely. Its tuning accuracy, useful polyphonic mode, small footprint,
and the ability to power other pedals make it
one of the best pedal tuners I’ve ever encountered—especially at its price point. I’m a little
disappointed that it can’t track alternate tunings
in its polyphonic mode, but its practicality and
accuracy with standard tuning more than make
up for that. Plus, there’s a USB port at the top
of the pedal to update its firmware, so hopefully
we’ll see this ability in the future. All in all, the
Poly Tune is a safe bet for anybody in the market
for a fantastic tuner pedal, and even more for
players who might’ve thought they couldn’t
improve on the one they already had.
Rating:
Tune Here, Here…and Here
When I first heard about the Poly Tune, I wasn’t
really sure what to make of it. The concept was
sound and the idea very intriguing, but ques-
tions about its accuracy loomed large. How
could it possibly figure out, from the jumbled,
discordant sound of all the open strings hit
together, which ones were out of tune? More
importantly, would it be strong enough to knock
my trusty Korg DT- 10 off of my board? Eager to
test its mettle, I grabbed my 1978 Gibson Les
Paul Custom and plugged it into the Poly Tune,
which in turn was connected to an Orange Tiny
Terror combo. I knew full well that the Les Paul
was already in tune, so I randomly turned the
tuning knobs in different directions to throw it
out of whack, and then hit the open strings with
the Poly Tune engaged. The result on the LED
screen was a simple readout of six small red
indicators, each representing one of the strings
I’d just struck. As I slowly tuned the low E up, I
could see its corresponding LED indicator rise,
When you pick just one string at a time, the
Poly Tune automatically displays a more famil-
iar monophonic readout—a strobe display
similar to a Korg Pitchblack or the ever-popular
Boss compact pedal tuner (now the TU- 3). It
was really cool watching it flip back and forth
between these modes—I tried in vain to confuse
its ability to detect what I was playing. Even run-
ning a Boss DS-1distortion pedal in front of the
Poly Tune couldn’t knock its accuracy off. As a
matter of fact, it strengthened it! The individual
string indicators snapped to position much
faster with the distortion running in front of the
tuner, which still amazes me. Surprisingly, the
easiest way to bewilder the tuner was to employ
a dropped tuning on the lowest string. The sin-
gle-note tuning mode accurately detected the
pitch, but the polyphonic mode became use-
less at that point. The Poly Tune can only make
use of this mode when the guitar is in standard
tuning. On the plus side, it can detect standard
tuning when transposed, even all the way down
to B. This is good, but it would have been nice if
the Poly Tune could’ve understood dropped-D,
considering how common that tuning is. Luckily,
the standard strobe readout handled individual
string tuning very accurately, no matter what
note I was aiming for. The Poly Tune also has
one more trick up its sleeve. Hidden in the cas-
ing is an ambient light sensor that adjusts the
brightness of the LED readout according to the
amount of light present in the area. Since a lot
of us play the occasional outdoor show or fes-
tival, I decided to test this by placing the tuner
directly in the sun while tuning a guitar outside.
Though I felt rather goofy standing in the PG
parking lot tuning the Strat, the readout was
perfectly detectable without any glare. Nice.
accuracy, ease of use and a
bright readout are essential.
Buy If...
Skip If...
you always play in alternate tunings.
TC Electronic
Street $99
tcelectronic.com
CLICKHere…
The Final Mojo
I’m as guilty as the next gear fanatic of acquiring
and flipping pedals over and over. My tuner, on
or use a mobile
device to read
this QR code
to see a video of
the Poly Tune in
action at
premierguitar.com
www.premierguitar.com
PREMIER GUITAR APRIL 2010 161
