Tuner

[BigRalphN]

Ok. When was the tuner update? How did I miss it? I know I d not use it a lot, but still, I must be blind

[frodebro]

It happened with 2.0.

[clselby]

I like the update but it seems to jumpy.

[BigRalphN]

It happened with 2.0.

K. Thanks. That's what I figured but somehow I didn't notice it. It void be because others were using my Helx a chuch and I used my AX8 onl because others had no clue h to use the AX8. I noticed the tuber Sunday when I was back using the Helix.

[jpdennis]

I like the update but it seems to jumpy.

 

There were several requests for more accuracy, precision, the ability to set harmonics, and better granularity.  Ask and ye shall receive.  Of course I am learning a new way of making sure my guitar is correctly in tune with this thing.  LOL

 

Dennis

[HonestOpinion]

I like the update but it seems to jumpy.

 

I thought that was just my less than new strings but it is happening on multiple guitars. At the risk of sounding ungrateful which I am not, big thanks for the vastly improved tuner but I am finding it a bit too jumpy as well. This may be the price we pay for getting a more granular readout but I am wondering if Line6 can stabilize it a bit in future firmware updates. Perhaps by freezing it for a moment after a brief read and then allowing it to warble (which is probably accurately reflecting what the string is doing). I have used other similarly or even more sensitive/granular tuners as well as strobe tuners and they are not as jumpy. Sorry to chime in on this one so soon after a phenomenal firmware upgrade. It must feel sometimes like no good deed goes unpunished.

[shanecgriffo]

i find it's jumpy but if it is mainly jumping around the centre indicator then for me, it's 'close enough for rock and roll' ;)

[frodebro]

I like the update but it seems to jumpy.

 

It tracks the notes pretty accurately, which causes it to move around with the physical motion of the string.  Harmonics or a lighter attack when tuning yields a more stable reading.

[Dshow]

I like the update but it seems to jumpy.

I don't know if it's just me but I find it is less "Jumpy" if you set the imput to the one you're actually using.

If set it from "Muti" to "Guitar" - but again could be just me ;-)

[klangmaler]

I like the update but it seems to jumpy.

Is that your first post??

Welcome!

Well, a more 'static' tuner would be suspicious, I guess ;)

[jasdadgad]

Line 6 certainly demonstrated the difference between "accuracy" and "granularity".

 

I consider my guitar "in tune" when the yellow bar passes the middle more than once or twice.  ;)

 

Or, when my bass player stops complaining.

[Charlie_Watt]

Good tuners are "jumpy" because the string pitch changes rapidly when you pluck it.  It starts out sharp and goes flat as the note dies out. 

[BigRalphN]

Hilarious. People complain that they want a more accurate tuner. Now they get it and it's too Jumpy. All good tuners will jump around a bit more. It was perfectly accurate before in my opinion but people and precision (though I highly doubt most can here + or - the amount built in unless they are one of the very few with pitch oerfect hearing. Did you ever pick up a players guitar who claimed their hearing was more accurate than tuners and check them? I did many times. I was setting up for a bar gig once (I was the sound tech at that time) and checked our singers guitar as all of us thought it sounded off but him. He had tuned a half step sharp. Another friend always tunes just a tad sharp. Not so much that you notice it but he actually thinks it sounds better that way. If it seems to b jumping just follow the larger of th displays like you used to. It is not changed. If you are in the green there you are close enough for live.

[musiclover7]

It ain't the tuner causing the jumpy folks, it's the guitar or whatever other instrument you have plugged in. If you don't like it, just focus on the bottom section, which is exactly what was there before. Ignore the finer section at the top. Feel Better? I'm a big fan of the finer tuner myself, but my instruments work well with that sort of thing.

[BigRalphN]

It ain't the tuner causing the jumpy folks, it's the guitar or whatever other instrument you have plugged in. If you don't like it, just focus on the bottom section, which is exactly what was there before. Ignore the finer section at the top. Feel Better? I'm a big fan of the finer tuner myself, but my instruments work well with that sort of thing.

Tuner ratio has a lot to do with it.

[gunpointmetal]

Turn down your tone control, use the neck pickup when doing "fine" tuning work; ignore the top display live because nobody else is going to notice....

[Charlie_Watt]

Not tuner ratio.  It's the way strings vibrate.  It will jump around even if you don't touch the tuning peg.  Pitch is higher at attack and it goes lower during decay.  It's very obvious on a good strobe tuner.

[HonestOpinion]

Not tuner ratio. It's the way strings vibrate. It will jump around even if you don't touch the tuning peg. Pitch is higher at attack and it goes lower during decay. It's very obvious on a good strobe tuner.

You do see the strobe start to fluctuate as the initial pluck decays but once you get it tuned there is usually a moment where it stabilizes before it starts to move again. That is the behavior I use when for instance adjusting the intonation or tuning with a strobe or any granular tuner.

[watch4king]

I struggled with the first version of the tuner also but this 2.0 seems to have made it a lot better. I feel tuning with a 12th fret harmonic works a lot better IMO.

[roscoe5]

The new tuner top indicator has helped me on the low B and E strings on the bass.  I previously felt like those were sometimes still out of tune slightly live right after I would tune up.

 

+1 to harmonic tuning on the lower bass strings, in addition to open.

[Rocco_Crocco]

The new tuner with the "fine tune" bar is awesome. L6 did a good job of improving upon the tuner which many complained about.

[tagwap]

While I am grateful for the update as requested the fine tuning seems very jumpy for me too.

 

To say that it's simply a problem caused by the string vibration variations doesn't cut it for me. It doesn't mean a tuner can't be stable. My other tuners (polytune mini 2, snark, polytune clip) don't jump around anything like the Helix and are very stable. 

 

I'm sure people will say "keep using the polytune clip then!" well I will and it's not a problem, I just don't understand why this seems to be so difficult for line 6.

 

Plug a boss TU-2, Polytune, Korg pitchblack etc into a helix fx loop and see if it jumps around and won't settle like the Helix tuner. They don't. 

[jeremyn]

With a strobe tuner you can see exactly how much variation there is in the string's frequency while you're tuning. The human eye is great at averaging out any vibrato once the pitch starts to close in on the centre frequency of the desired note. The pattern can be clearly seen wobbling back and forth, and the viewer can easily determine when the net travel of the pattern over time has stopped or slowed sufficiently. This works well, because the ear naturally averages out all that vibrato wobble and identifies the note as the centre average of all the vibrato.

 

The Peterson and Turbotuner strobe tuners are great examples of how to build a tuner that lets the player decide how accurate they want their guitar to be in tune. One guy might spend 10 seconds per string trying get things as close as it is possible for a vibrating string to be. Another guy, might be satisfied spending 1 second per string getting things 'good enough for rock and roll'.

 

Let's talk about accuracy. A tuner should allow a guitar to be tuned 'accurately' within the tolerance desired by the player.

 

The updated v2.0 granularity of the Helix tuner display does help get the string much more accurately tuned than in previous versions. But, the display is way more 'jumpy' than the visual strobe on my strobe tuners for the same guitars. It takes me longer to tune to the same accuracy with the Helix, as the display seems to show an instantaneous sample of whatever frequency exists at that instant time. But, since the update rate is slower than the vibrato movement, the string frequency appears to be aliasing against the display update, causing it to 'jump' around erratically. I assume that a little more low pass filtering on the second derivative of the frequency response would help bring the 'jumpiness' under control.

 

Better yet, just put a little strobe display (with a decent update rate) where those high resolution tuning bars are.

 

But, I'm definitely happy to say that the 2.0 update has allowed me to tune my guitar far more accurately than in previous versions.

[gunpointmetal]

But it still won't read A0 on my 9-string.....

[cruisinon2]

Or, when my bass player stops complaining.

Nothing worse than an uppity bass player...just tell him you'll get somebody else to bang on "root/5th". ;)

[RRMark]

I find the new tuner with added granules is much improved to my ear.

[hideout]

I like the update but it seems to jumpy.

Use 12th fret harmonics. It seems more stable when you do that. Likely because there are fewer other harmonics can that can trick it. With increased granularity that's gonna happen. I kinda wish they'd done a stroboscopic type tuner. I mean, yes it would probably take up a lot of DSP but who cares? Unless you like to be obnoxious and annoy people by not muting the output while you tune, it won't matter.

[mileskb]

Let me be as subtle as possible..

 

Dear Line 6 engineers that worked on the Tuner display...

 

Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  ....... and Thank You !!!   (did I miss anyone?)  :blink: 

[Rocco_Crocco]

While I am grateful for the update as requested the fine tuning seems very jumpy for me too.

 

To say that it's simply a problem caused by the string vibration variations doesn't cut it for me. It doesn't mean a tuner can't be stable. My other tuners (polytune mini 2, snark, polytune clip) don't jump around anything like the Helix and are very stable. 

 

I'm sure people will say "keep using the polytune clip then!" well I will and it's not a problem, I just don't understand why this seems to be so difficult for line 6.

 

Plug a boss TU-2, Polytune, Korg pitchblack etc into a helix fx loop and see if it jumps around and won't settle like the Helix tuner. They don't. 

 

 

 

The other tuners you mentioned are not capable of the fine tuning the Helix is.... that's why they don't fluctuate. On the Helix,  get the indicator close to the middle of the fine tune bar and you're in tune. It is exactly as it is supposed to be.

 

Fine tuning capability or indicator stability. Pick one because the physics of the guitar string says you can't have both.

[gkinder]

Hilarious. People complain that they want a more accurate tuner. Now they get it and it's too Jumpy. All good tuners will jump around a bit more. It was perfectly accurate before in my opinion but people and precision (though I highly doubt most can here + or - the amount built in unless they are one of the very few with pitch oerfect hearing. Did you ever pick up a players guitar who claimed their hearing was more accurate than tuners and check them? I did many times. I was setting up for a bar gig once (I was the sound tech at that time) and checked our singers guitar as all of us thought it sounded off but him. He had tuned a half step sharp. Another friend always tunes just a tad sharp. Not so much that you notice it but he actually thinks it sounds better that way. If it seems to b jumping just follow the larger of th displays like you used to. It is not changed. If you are in the green there you are close enough for live.

 

LOL, thought the same thing about the complaints....didn't realize 2.x had a tuner update....just checked it against my Peterson strobe tuner and the Helix tuner is spot on with the Peterson....FYI, the Peterson jumps around too...

[jeremyn]

The other tuners you mentioned are not capable of the fine tuning the Helix is.... that's why they don't fluctuate. On the Helix, get the indicator close to the middle of the fine tune bar and you're in tune. It is exactly as it is supposed to be.

Fine tuning capability or indicator stability. Pick one because the physics of the guitar string says you can't have both.

Physics doesn't dictate that tuning precision and indicator are mutually exclusive. The exclusion is between tuning precision and tuning speed.

 

There is a difference between the rhythmic pulsations around the desired frequency that you get with a (real) strobe tuner, and the erratic random jumpiness you get from aliased sampling of a high bandwidth capture of a 'particularly wobbly' string being displayed on a slower update display (without using an anti aliasing filter).

 

The 'jumpiness' on the Helix fine tuner can definitely be reduced in firmware, and is not a fundamental limit of physics.

 

That said, the previous suggestions of using 12th fret harmonics reduces the 'wobble', and reduces the aliasing/jumpiness of the fine tuner display.

[mileskb]

I have a Moser 10 string (think B.C. Rich Bich) and an Ovation Pacemaker (12-Sting)...  let me say it again...

 

Dear Line 6 engineers that worked on the Tuner display...

 

Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  Thank You !  ....... and Thank You !!!   (did I miss anyone?)   :blink: 

 

 

Especially for tuning the Bich...  which I actually checked before the upgrade.  Granted it was close, but two of the doubled strings sets were an each end of the tolerance....  so it "sounded" out of tune and really the only way to dial it in, was by ear.  That doesn't work for me.  I made a pact long ago that no one would ever hear me tune on stage.  While I don't play out anymore... at least not yet...  I just can't stand "hearing" a guitar being tuned, even if it's mine.  When I unplug the tuner, or unmute the tuner on the Helix, I expect to be playing... not still tuning...   and THAT is what I have now... THANK YOU !!!!  This is awesome.     Now I won't have to bring my Peterson when I play, at least not for me to use.

[PierM]

Sorry to say the Tuner is still pretty much erratic. You can pick same string same force 100 times and get 100 different results. Also there are conditions where the tuner doesn't work at all, as with my guitar hosting a lundgren M7 pickup. Tried changing impedance and stuff, but still doesn't change the problem.

[klangmaler]

Happy to say the Helix tuner is the best one I have right now :)  (for all of my guits and basses).

 

Probs may occur if the firmware wasn't installed correctly, I guess.

 

[...] "Don't forget to to reset globals and restore presets:

 

HELIX FLOOR ONLY: While holding footswitches 9 and 10 (middle two switches on the bottom row), turn on Helix. Wait for the message “Will reset Globals and restore stock Presets, Setlists and IRs…†to appear and let go.

 

HELIX RACK ONLY: While holding knobs 5 and 6 below the screen, turn on Helix Rack. Wait for the message “Will reset Globals and restore stock Presets, Setlists and IRs…†to appear and let go. " [...]

[Rocco_Crocco]

 

There is a difference between the rhythmic pulsations around the desired frequency that you get with a (real) strobe tuner, and the erratic random jumpiness you get from aliased sampling of a high bandwidth capture of a 'particularly wobbly' string being displayed on a slower update display (without using an anti aliasing filter).

 

 

I am not a science guy, but more likely what appears as random jumpiness is probably the indicator (umm) indicating small changes in pitch. I'd imagine minute defects in strings, moving the guitar slightly, etc would all cause this.

[spikey]

To me, its not that its more "jumpy" (for lack of a better word). Its just designed wrong. No, Im not a coder or programmer and I dont mean to sound un appreciative of the effort (which was lots). What I wish would happen is for some one to look at Kemper's new 4.0 version of a tuner, and then make the Helix tuner like that one. Here is what Im talking about.  As always, YMMV :D

[njglover]

I used to guitar tech professionally, so I have used a lot of different tuners, including fancy expensive Petersons (which I actually hate because that level of accuracy/precision/whatever you want to call it is annoying and just not necessary in the real world). If you want it to not jump around, there are a couple things to keep in mind with ANY high-accuracy tuner:

1. Don't use a pick. Using a pick adds additional harmonics that will cause the indicator to fluctuate more.
2. Tune with the guitar in playing position and do not put any pressure on the neck. If you tune with the guitar laying flat on a table with a neck rest, it will be slightly out of tune when you strap it on to play it. Similarly, if you have your hand resting on the neck, you may be applying slight pressure on the neck one way or another which will also cause the guitar to be slightly out of tune when you cease applying said pressure.
3. Don't pluck the string hard. The harder you pluck the string, the more the pitch of the string will fluctuate as it settles down. Having said that, if you are mostly going to be plucking hard and not letting notes sustain, then it might be better to tune to a hard pluck (but it will be more difficult to do so because of the fluctuations).

Remember that the ultimate objective is to play notes that SOUND in tune, not that register as exactly 432.97 Hz or whatever. Go through tuning each string until each are close enough to center, then turn the tuner off and play a couple chords. Do they sound in tune? Then you are done!

[PierM]

My main tuner is a Peterson and I don't have any issue with it. Never ever had one, with any guitar.

 

Said that it's obvious you have to tune on decay and not on the attack, but this is not really the problem with the Helix.

 

Problem is Helix tuner is erratic, looks like it is not capable to analyze the signal when this is changing its amplitude, and outside that optimal range he needs, it starts to jump nuts. This is why it tends to work better using harmonics, because you get a very stable and long signal, but which is really not 100% correct unless you are using a true temperament guitar.

 

For example, if I check my guitars intonation with the Helix, they can be all wrong and all right at the same time. It just depends on randomness.

 

I'll keep using my Peterson. ;)

[mileskb]

Remember that the ultimate objective is to play notes that SOUND in tune, not that register as exactly 432.97 Hz or whatever. Go through tuning each string until each are close enough to center, then turn the tuner off and play a couple chords. Do they sound in tune? Then you are done!

 

Exactly...  As I mentioned earlier, I like to rely on the gear to tune.  But having said that, be it using the peterson strobe or the Helix now... I can get each string as close to the center as possible.  It might not be dead center, just like the strobe drifts a little, but it's close enough that my ears, or a pair of doubled strings can't tell the difference..    Previously...  tuning the doubles would sometimes be ok.. and sometimes not because I really couldn't tell how in range I was on each string.  The Helix has solved that now.   And yes, it takes a little getting used to, and yes you must follow PierM's advise on tuning, but we should have been doing that all along.

[njglover]

Exactly...  As I mentioned earlier, I like to rely on the gear to tune.  But having said that, be it using the peterson strobe or the Helix now... I can get each string as close to the center as possible.  It might not be dead center, just like the strobe drifts a little, but it's close enough that my ears, or a pair of doubled strings can't tell the difference..    Previously...  tuning the doubles would sometimes be ok.. and sometimes not because I really couldn't tell how in range I was on each string.  The Helix has solved that now.   And yes, it takes a little getting used to, and yes you must follow PierM's advise on tuning, but we should have been doing that all along.

 

To further my point, no guitar, even when "perfectly intonated," is actually going to play perfectly in tune on every fret of every string. In fact, you'd be lucky to get the exact same pitch from the same fret every time you play there because the likelihood of you applying equal pressure every time is very small. I've found that guitars with compensated nuts (like Music Man) tend to do a better job of having correct pitch over the length of the neck, but I actually felt it sounded more wrong by having it be more right. After intonating a customer's guitar, I always checked by playing a couple chords in various positions along the neck to make sure that all the chords sounded in tune, or at least as close to in tune as they can be (compensating for one chord invariably leads to another chord going out of tune).

 

So anyway, long story short, maybe the Helix is a little jumpy, maybe it's just how you're plucking it, maybe it's both! But at the end of the day, if you can't get your guitar in tune with the Helix's tuner, it's probably not the Helix's fault. Blame physics.