Has anyone ever tried one of these tuners?
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=7318324906&ssPageName=STRK:MEWA:IT
Interesting… I’d like to know if it would work on a whistle. All the other instruments it mention you can actually feel the vibration of the instrument in your hands when you play them. I never feel that with a whistle… Don’t mean the vibration aint really there… just imperceptible to me.
I have one of the precursors of this tuner, the Intellitouch tuner for guitar, made by the same company. I love the guitar tuner and tried to use it on a whistle when I first started whistling. It seemed to work well but it was very hard to see the display and blow the whistle at the same time. I would be interested in hearing from musicians who actually use it. The guitar tuner has a couple of quirks, but once you learn them it is a very useful tool. I have a friend who is music director at a Catholic church with a very loud organ. With the Intellitouch tuner he can tune his nylon string guitar while the organist is warming up.
Mike
I have an Intellitouch for my guitar, and also have trouble seeing it while tuning the whistle.
I’d like to try this other model (they appear to be from the same maker as the
Intellitouch) perhaps it would be easier to position on the whistle…
They will definately pick up the vibrations of the tinwhistle better than your fingers can.
I would only worry about whether it will stay on a whistle’s small, round tube as well as it
would on a Clarinet (since the clamp seems to be adjusted for larger instruments). But it has
possibilities. Hm. It will definately work better for the flute than the Intellitouch, which is
too small to clip on.
I’m gonna order one; I’ll let you know how it works. Thanks for the link.
(edited to provide an English translation for fearfaoin-speak)
I finally got ahold of one of these tuners (regalmusic2, who sells them on ebay, is great to work with,
by the way) and I thought I’d post my thoughts about the product.
On my SweeTone D, the only places I could clip this tuner (without covering holes) are between the
mouthpiece and the first hole (which means that the tuner is very close to your eyes), or at the end
of the whistle (which makes the balance feel odd). In either case, the tuner picks up B, A, and D quite
well. But it seems to have trouble picking up the notes G, F#, and E. This is fine to tune the whistle,
as long as your whistle is in tune with itself: you can tune the A or the D, and assume the rest of your
whistle will also be in tune. But you don’t want to use one of these for the whistle if you need to tune
each note individually, as a whistlemaker would.
Overall, this is a neat device. The clip that holds onto the instrument is a flexible design, so that it
will clip onto many different instrument shapes. (The guitar version of the intellitouch will only clip
onto the 1/2" of wood of a guitar peghead.) Soon, I shall try the tuner out on my Clarinet, Flute, and
Mountain Dulcimer, to see if it picks up all notes on those. The tuner also has a long neck separating
the electronics from the clip, which is jointed on either end, so you can position the readout so that it
is visible even while you play. There is also a Transpose feature which lets you see the note names
as you think of them while playing a transposing instrument like a Clarinet. (Otherwise, when you
play a “C” on your Clarinet, it would show up as a “Bb” on the tuner.)