Beating a dead horse? Tuner accuracy....come on!

[jorisgriffioen]

ITT: No one knows what "accuracy" means.

 

ITT: DI still doesn't know what "user experience" means.

 

Who cares that someone uses the wrong words? It's not their job to define the technical problem, it's the customer's job to tell you what task they find hard to solve. It's yours to translate that to technical specifications / changes or usability changes when the problem is user error.

 

I find your attitude towards your customers very tiring. People can be entitled, they can be stupid, they can have the wrong ideas or be using the wrong words to describe something. It doesn't matter. In the end they are using the product and are feeling friction or are unable to do something they should be able to. There's a lot of energy spent here on trying to disprove what someone is feeling - as if that is possible - instead of on what exactly the cause of the issue is.

 

The Helix is a beautiful evolution of UX for guitar, it absolutely beats the hell out of anything before it in terms of usability. If you want to keep evolving it and maintain that quality you really need to take your customers experiences more seriously.

[phil_m]

ITT: DI still doesn't know what "user experience" means.

 

Who cares that someone uses the wrong words? It's not their job to define the technical problem, it's the customer's job to tell you what task they find hard to solve. It's yours to translate that to technical specifications / changes or usability changes when the problem is user error.

 

I find your attitude towards your customers very tiring. People can be entitled, they can be stupid, they can have the wrong ideas or be using the wrong words to describe something. It doesn't matter. In the end they are using the product and are feeling friction or are unable to do something they should be able to. There's a lot of energy spent here on trying to disprove what someone is feeling - as if that is possible - instead of on what exactly the cause of the issue is.

 

The Helix is a beautiful evolution of UX for guitar, it absolutely beats the hell out of anything before it in terms of usability. If you want to keep evolving it and maintain that quality you really need to take your customers experiences more seriously.

Uh, what's the point of dragging this old post up? The post you quoted was something DI wrote even before the tuner was updated... You do realize it was updated, don't you?

[BigRalphN]

Uh, what's the point of dragging this old post up? The post you quoted was something DI wrote even before the tuner was updated... You do realize it was updated, don't you?

Agreed. I find this whole thread hilarious. I know people get pissed when us o,d guys talk about the old days but come on people. First, the tuner in the Helix was never designed to be a bench tuner for luthiers. Look at the price of a Peterson and then figure out how much it would add to the price. I always laugh at shops that pop a guitar on the strobe and tune it up then throw it in a case. Chances are at least me if the pegs is bumped slightly so it won't be perfect when it comes out anyway. I do understand taking care of customers. The initial Helix tuner, even before the update, was accurate enough for live use. Here us we're the old days comments come in. How many of you have worked on a crew and tuned the guitars? I can not count the number of times we tuned all of the guitars to the rack unit. Then it comes to swap guitars, you hand it to the musician, he strums once or twice then starts adjusting the tuning! To many of cavy tuning just doesn't sound right. For smaller bar bands do you use the same tuners? How close are your guitars? I bet if you check most bar bands with a strobe after setup you would find that none are tuned exactly the same yet it sounds fine to the ear when blended. Very rarely someone might notice. How many times have you seen a guitarist fiddle with tuning after a song? Did you hear anything wrong? I look at the Helix tuner as a live only tuner. With the latest update it is sufficient for studio also but I bet most still use a software or rack tuner. Technology has advanced to a point where people are over picky about things like tuning. Do not get me wrong. Tuning is important but it does not need to be as accurate as a strobe. I still remember a certain guitar p,any that insisted everything be tuned slightly sharp as it was the only way it sounded right to his ear. No one listening ever noticed.

[phil_m]

Agreed. I find this whole thread hilarious. I know people get pissed when us o,d guys talk about the old days but come on people. First, the tuner in the Helix was never designed to be a bench tuner for luthiers. Look at the price of a Peterson and then figure out how much it would add to the price. I always laugh at shops that pop a guitar on the strobe and tune it up then throw it in a case. Chances are at least me if the pegs is bumped slightly so it won't be perfect when it comes out anyway. I do understand taking care of customers. The initial Helix tuner, even before the update, was accurate enough for live use. Here us we're the old days comments come in. How many of you have worked on a crew and tuned the guitars? I can not count the number of times we tuned all of the guitars to the rack unit. Then it comes to swap guitars, you hand it to the musician, he strums once or twice then starts adjusting the tuning! To many of cavy tuning just doesn't sound right. For smaller bar bands do you use the same tuners? How close are your guitars? I bet if you check most bar bands with a strobe after setup you would find that none are tuned exactly the same yet it sounds fine to the ear when blended. Very rarely someone might notice. How many times have you seen a guitarist fiddle with tuning after a song? Did you hear anything wrong? I look at the Helix tuner as a live only tuner. With the latest update it is sufficient for studio also but I bet most still use a software or rack tuner. Technology has advanced to a point where people are over picky about things like tuning. Do not get me wrong. Tuning is important but it does not need to be as accurate as a strobe. I still remember a certain guitar p,any that insisted everything be tuned slightly sharp as it was the only way it sounded right to his ear. No one listening ever noticed.

 

The funny thing to me is that I have the Peterson Strobe Tuner app, and in addition to showing the actual strobe display, it shows how off you are in +/- cents reading. I've got to say, it is nearly impossible for me to get any of my guitars to actually stay within 1 or 2 cents of pitch. The nice thing about that app is that it gives you an idea of how much instability there actually is in a pitch from a plucked string. This is why I'm still pretty skeptical when people are claiming to hear things being 3 cents off from pitch...

[Charlie_Watt]

I have the Peterson App for my Iphone too and I don't think it works as well as my Peterson VSII Tuner.  Not sure why but I get better results with the VSII. 

[HonestOpinion]

The tuner granularity is great now and this is long past beating a dead horse, we are now beating a horse skeleton or perhaps even a horse phantasm. As long as we are though I still think the display could be made a little less jumpy in a future firmware update. It certainly isn't keeping me up nights though, although that horse ghost is a bit frightening.

[WickedFinger]

I suppose in a pinch you can use it to at least get in proper pitch and tune the strings to each other. Personally I have a gold and a black Korg PitchBlack tuner and one of my Les Paul's has a G Force. I have never really been happy with the tuner software in any modeler or multi  unit I have owned. For shear accuracy and being true bypass I really like the Korgs, I use them for all my intonation set up work. They have strobe modes as well, maybe not as good as Peterson but then what is really. I think we get lazy with all the tech at hand. I remember when I started playing as kid there were no tuners and no one was certain they were in pitch you just tuned to each other. Ever try to tune a guitar with one of those old pitch pipes? Kill me now. Modern tech has given us so many tuners these days and all of them are pretty damn good, never hurts to hear the notes harmonize into the pitch on different strings and you know the guitar is dead on. No one should try and do set up work with a not so great tuner. Speaking Helix wise, I have never used the tuner function, I always have one of my Korgs in the loop. 

[steevo1977]

I remember when I started playing as kid there were no tuners and no one was certain they were in pitch you just tuned to each other.

 

19th century?

[WickedFinger]

Mid 80s actually, we cannot all be young and dense as that seems to erode with time, hopefully anyway.

 

I just tested the Helix to my external Gold Pitch Black and it seemed to be on pitch pretty much as the Pitch Black but yeah, a lot of drift and instability maybe really only for quick live tune checks. Bless anyone trying to set intonation using it, best of luck. First time I actually kicked it on myself. I never had a notion to use it as a main tuner anyway. 

[Lachdanan0121]

Is there any of the horse left!?!?!  lol I kid, I kid.

[datacommando]

Is there any of the horse left!?!?!  lol I kid, I kid.

 

 I think that I must have got the last piece of it... in this burger. Mmmmm.  ;)

[TheDaveDaveDave]

FWIW, with .011's on all my guitars (3 pleked, 1 PRS BRW, a couple of stainless fretted and a ROCK solid quarter-sawn baseball-bat tele) they ALL will vary 3 cents with my Peterson strobostomp with the heat of my hands - I forget about everything technical and just PLAY.

 

Whatever the dead horse you're all beating, I hope you can make it sound good in the end.  I assure y'all:  not 1 cent or 2 cents of tuner accuracy reported to you from a machine are going to make you sound that much more awesome than just feeling your instrument and working with it ...  ;-)

[frodebro]

Is there any of the horse left!?!?!  lol I kid, I kid.

 

It's pretty granular at this point.

[Guitarmaniac64]

I read about someone freaking out over the new tuner as the top boxes was going in and out of tune all the time when he tuned the guitar

I have a couple of guitars i just put on  new strings and did a setup and maintainance on.

And on all of them when i tune the guitars and the guitars reaches green boxes it pretty much stay there well sometimes it goes over to yellow but not often,

So i guess he used a guitar with old strings and that was not correctly setuped.

[Guitarmaniac64]

FWIW, with .011's on all my guitars (3 pleked, 1 PRS BRW, a couple of stainless fretted and a ROCK solid quarter-sawn baseball-bat tele) they ALL will vary 3 cents with my Peterson strobostomp with the heat of my hands, as I forget about everything technical and just PLAY. Whatever the dead horse you're all beating, I hope you can make it sound good into the end, but I assure y'all, not 1 cent or 2 cents of tuner accuracy reported to you from a machine are going to make you sound that much more awesome than just feeler your instrument and working with it ...;-)

Strange as someone post a video over at the Helix FB page compared it to a Turbo Tuner ST-200 and when it was slightly flat on Helix it was slightly flat on the Turbo Tuner aswell.

Maybe the Turbo is not a good tuner?

[zooey]

FWIW, with .011's on all my guitars (3 pleked, 1 PRS BRW, a couple of stainless fretted and a ROCK solid quarter-sawn baseball-bat tele) they ALL will vary 3 cents with my Peterson strobostomp with the heat of my hands, as I forget about everything technical and just PLAY.

This, but without the precision guitars :).

 

The temperature in my basement "studio" isn't very well controlled, often cold when I first go down there, can get pretty hot after a while of playing. My main guitar is always sharp when it's cold, then drops as it and the room heat up. I've been wondering if that's a flaw in the guitar, or as I suspect, and is somewhat confirmed by your post, just the realities of physics.

[davidb7170]

Physics. Materials expand when warmed, and contract when cooled.

[cruisinon2]

I've been wondering if that's a flaw in the guitar, or as I suspect, and is somewhat confirmed by your post, just the realities of physics.

There's nothing wrong with the guitar. Guitars don't like the cold, or heat for that matter...extremes in temperature are generally not good. Everything contracts in the cold, especially the strings...hence them going sharp. You ever try and play an outdoor gig on a cool evening? Much below 60 degrees, and staying in tune becomes a real pain in the a$$...

[zooey]

Yes of course tuning is affected by temperature, so changes in temperature change your tuning, that's not really debatable.

 

My question for myself was wether that's happening to a greater extent because of some flaw(s) in my guitar. More to the point, is there anything I can do to improve matters, other than stabilizing the temp in that room, which is hard and/or expensive?

[musiclover7]

The Helix tuner seems to be working well enough for me, and I run 4 different instruments into it, depending on which band I am playing with.  I will take a chop at the horse and mention that I too wish it was a little more stable, that there was some sort of algorithm to even out the signal on a plucked string so it didn't bounce around a lot, but hey, clearly the pitch is bouncing as well and it is just following it.  Sometimes I think it's a wonder any of us ever play anything at all...

[cruisinon2]

Yes of course tuning is affected by temperature, so changes in temperature change your tuning, that's not really debatable.

 

My question for myself was wether that's happening to a greater extent because of some flaw(s) in my guitar. More to the point, is there anything I can do to improve matters, other than stabilizing the temp in that room, which is hard and/or expensive?

Well "flaw" implies some sort of defect which would presumably have an accompanying remedy. I don't think that's the case here, though. Some woods tend to move more than others, in my experience. How well its made, and the individual piece(s) of wood in question no doubt play a role, but in general I find that my guitars with maple necks (especially one-piece designs - as opposed to having a separate glued-on fretboard, even if both pieces are maple) are particularly susceptible to temp and humidity changes, and require more frequent adjustments as compared to my other guitars with rosewood or ebony boards. Having a glued joint seems to impart additional stability, somehow. It does seem a little counterintuitive to me, but what do I know? I'm neither a botanist, nor a structural engineer. 😉

[phil_m]

Whenever I see this topic move back up top, I think of this:

 

[cruisinon2]

Whenever I see this topic move back up top, I think of this:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAUY1J8KizU

You think this one is bad? The "piezo plink" threads over on the JTV forum are absolutely unstoppable by any force known to man...

[zooey]

Well, cruisin' actually described my guitar exactly - one piece bolt-on maple neck - and that style's susceptibility to temperature issues was news to me. So zombie thread or not, that particular post was useful to me, addressed my question exactly. So NOW, feel free to stake it for real :)

[glideman]

Somebody please perma kill this thread!!!  LoL!!!

[spikey]

What happened to "close enough for rock 'n roll"? ;)

 

Conway and Mr. Cash took it with them...

[PeterHamm]

[tagwap]

I love Helix in every way...except the tuner!

 

Not a problem, just use a polytune clip like I have been. Well I took a different guitar to gig today and the polytune was in my other guitar case so I was forced to use Helix. 

 

Before the tuner was inaccurate but now...however accurate it may be it is unusable. Just far too jumpy all over the place. Impossible to get it to settle to tune to and whatever people say there's simply no need for it to be that way. None of my other accurate tuner pedals jump and flit all over the place like this, I tried an FX8 for a while and the tuner on that was great just like my polytune, my polytune clip and the boss tu-2. Smooth and accurate..that's simply all we want. I find it amazing that it seems to be such an issue when they've got everything else on the Helix so right.

Oh well, Like you say.....flogging a dead horse. Shame because in EVERY other way I ABSOLUTELY LOVE HELIX and even sold on my fractal stuff that I bought to compare to stick with it. 

[PeterHamm]

You know what I hate?

People who DON'T USE COASTERS!
 

THAT is serious...

[hideout]

I think if the upper indicators on the tuner were a little slower or at least didn't respond so quickly to every miniscule change in pitch, it would seem more stable. It's too squirrelly right now. It should respond more like the needle in the old Boss tuners. It needs to take a more averaging approach to indicating the detected pitch. I personally didn't have any issues with the old tuner.

[Verne-Bunsen]

...the tuner is not able to visualize small change within tuning... so I turn the tuner heads leading to changes in tone/tuning but no change appearing on the screen at all.

 

 

I think if the upper indicators on the tuner were a little slower or at least didn't respond so quickly to every miniscule change in pitch, it would seem more stable. It's too squirrelly right now.

 

 

Interesting.

[hideout]

Interesting.

 

Indeed.

[TheDaveDaveDave]

This, but without the precision guitars :).

 

The temperature in my basement "studio" isn't very well controlled, often cold when I first go down there, can get pretty hot after a while of playing. My main guitar is always sharp when it's cold, then drops as it and the room heat up. I've been wondering if that's a flaw in the guitar, or as I suspect, and is somewhat confirmed by your post, just the realities of physics.

Yup - physics. When a fan blows on my guitar I notice the change in tuning. My basement studio in my last house suffered from the same thing, and many other annoying problems like a broken neutral to the pole! For the temperature fluctuation issues I jammed up the windows with insulation and sealed them with caulk, which really helped. It also helped to stop the neighbours with their annoying noise issues/complaints to the cops! ;-). More importantly, it helped to even out the humidity in the whole house, which not only made it more comfortable but also helped keep my gear in better shape. If there's anything you can do to remedy your HVAC and insulation issues, I highly recommend it. Good for the planet too ;-)

 

As for your guitars, I do notice that keeping a low action with less relief in the truss makes them less susceptible to temperature changes. The drawback is that the lower your action and string height is, the more often you need to tweak your truss rod - flying "close to the trees" means that there's less room to avoid fret buzz with every little change in temperature....

 

Hope this helps!

[spikey]

You know what I hate?

People who DON'T USE COASTERS!

 

THAT is serious...

Them Coasters live all over Florida I hear...

[spikey]

When I played in the pubs every break before a set the guitar would cool off, and be a bit out of tune. After the 1st song it would be ok for another 45 minutes or so. I think that's (dare I say it) normal. AS far as the tuner, I'd still like to see one implemented like what Kemper has. This ones usable, but I much prefer the one on the KPA.

[hideout]

The one on the Kemper is VERY reminiscent of the one on the XT-Live years ago! I loved that tuner... hated everything else about that pedal.

[cruisinon2]

As for your guitars, I do notice that keeping a low action with less relief in the truss makes them less susceptible to temperature changes.

Trying to wrap my head around why this would be the case. I'm a fan of low action and as little relief as I can get away with...but with the exception of one remarkably stable neck I have, all my guitars are as susceptible to temp and humidity changes as the next guy's. I don't see how straight the neck is or isn't, or where the strings live relative to the frets would confer any sort of immunity to temperature changes. Heat things up and they expand, cool them off and they shrink...their relative positions at the outset, seems to me would be largely irrelevant. Some necks are just more stable than others. Quality of the craftsmanship and the individual piece(s) of wood in question (a newer build, vs. a 20 year old neck that has "settled") play far bigger roles than anything else.

[zooey]

Just out of curiosity, what's that most-stable-tuning guitar you have?

[cruisinon2]

Just out of curiosity, what's that most-stable-tuning guitar you have?

It's a custom piece from a guy named Woody Phifer. No pics on my phone, but It's similar to this one I found online...mine is HSH, and blue burst finish. This one looks a little more purple.

[zooey]

Interesting, thanks.