Korg Pitchblack+ Chromatic Pedal Tuner

I’ve owned about 6 tuners since the early days. The most accurate one has been a Peterson Strobe Tuner which is very accurate and great for tuning a piano to particular temperaments as it has a numeric “cents” readout. But I needed a basic tuner for guitar, bass, and other stringed instruments that was easy to read from the floor, and the Pitchblack is it. With other tuners I have to have them up close and be wearing my reading glasses, but not with this guy. It’s got a lot cool extra features which I will also find useful, but the visibility is what I was after and this has big, bright LEDs and a flat/sharp movement that doesn’t give you a headache. And it is fast. There are faster tuners, but we are talking milliseconds here, so this one will do just fine. Two thumbs up !

For a pedal tuner this is my favorite. I run two guitars into it so I can just switch quickly during a set. You can daisy chain power off it too, I recommend a Visual Sound One Spot to power it. This is on my board being powered by a Voodoo Labs PP2 – works great. Something most people don’t know is that this this is super accurate. Most tuners are accurate to within .10 percent. This is accurate to .01 and with the strobing feature its easy to get it perfectly in tune. I prefer this over all the Boss tuners, Peterson (nice but expensive), Polytune by TC (small readout) is good – my second choice. For rackmount I would go with a Korg, but they aren’t as accurate as these newer Pitchblack series. My wife has one and uses it for her basses too.

I use this with a guitar and a bass that ultimately ends up in a BOSS DD-20 (looper) lets me easily tune them both and switch between them to record loops without futzing about or changing any settings.

The readout is large and bright. Response is quick. Has preset alternate tunings like open G or whatever.

Best tuner I’ve ever had.

Received my polyphonic Korg ‘Pitch Black’ tuner pedal yesterday and I am immediately very impressed. It has a decent weight and quality feel about it with its metal casing and footswitch. The LED display is bold and bright and really clear to view – handy if in a darkened playing environment. The “poly” tuning is a pretty natty feature meaning that (in standard tuning) you can simply strum all open strings together and quickly bring things into tune with the LED matrix indicating the pitch of all six strings simultaneously. For even more precise tuning simply pluck any one string and the unit will detect the string and indicate your tuning accordingly using the upper LED band (which has 4 modes of animation) with the centre LED being “in tune” whilst the matrix panel displays the note name very visibly in red.

In mode [1] the tuner works much like a needle, swinging left to right with dead centre being “in tune”. In mode [2] the LED bar scrolls a block pattern either from the left or from the right (indicating low or high respectively) until the desired pitch is attained. The speed of scroll pattern indicates how far out the tuning is with the objective being to “freeze” this animation. Mode [3] is similar to [2] however just the LEDs on the left scroll if the pitch is flat and just those to the right will scroll if it is too high. Finally mode [4] is a mirror effect where the LEDs scroll from both sides towards the centre with scroll speed again indicating how far off pitch you are.

I invested in this pedal largely as clip-on tuners, and the built in tuners I have experienced in previous multi-effect units, have never proven to be that accurate, with some unforgiving splash of fuzz or distortion always on hand to point this out. Using the strobe effect (in particular) with this pedal has allowed me to confidently reset my intonation very quickly and easily to the 12th fret with the tuner confirming open string, fretted octave and harmonics as being all spot on now 🙂 There is a calibration feature to the pedal but this is something I have yet to delve into and possibly never will so I’ll not elaborate. See Korg for detail there.

Finally, although you can power this from a standard 9v battery, it also features both a 9v ‘in’ and 9v ‘through’ socket enabling you to cascade your juice down to another pedal on your board without taking up an additional port from your supply.

Overall I am very and instantly impressed with this pedal. Go buy one – even if only for the pretty lights – it won’t disappoint.

I’m a full-time worship leader who has used this pedal during weekly rehearsals and every Sunday morning for the past several months. It continues to stand up to normal wear and tear and hasn’t let me down yet. It’s easy to read on stage even when you have stepped away from the pedal. Being able to plug two guitars into it at once and quickly switch between them has made switching to a backup guitar a fairly quick and painless procedure and has been a great solution for sets requiring me to use both of my guitars.

I only have two complaints about this pedal. First, the plastic face that takes up the majority of the top of the pedal started coming unglued on the left side within the first week. I take care of my pedals and have had this on a pedalboard since I got it. This is definitely a design flaw. Second, I had to give the pedal its own dedicated power source to keep it from humming through the speakers while engaged. As soon as the lights started flashing my amp would have a low hum until they stopped. Now that I have a Voodoo Labs power conditioner the problem has disappeared, though giving it its own power supply (I originally used a OneSpot) also worked.

BZZZZZZZ…pause….BZZZZZ.
This is my second Pitchblack Poly, and both have had serious noise issues. Engage the tuning mode, and it’s whisper quiet…until the guitar feeds a signal into it, and then BZZZZZZZZ.

Really annoying.

I guess I have to go buy a new tuner.