Planet Waves Micro Headstock Guitar Tuner

Had a chance to use 4 of these on 4 different instruments for almost a year now. They’re a great little micro tuner and will fit on any headstock somewhere. The little arm that the screen attaches to is so easy to clamp and release without looking once you understand the release. The body that holds the screen rotates 360 infinitely AND the actual screen can rotate its orientation 4 positions as well. So the whole thing the build everything was very well thought out. Love how tiny it is.

Sadly however, I have found myself not using them too much because testing them against a chromatic tuning pedal, they’re all consistently “off” once you turn them off and back on again for the next use. Either consistently sharp or consistently flat. All 4 of them. But hey, most people probably cant tell if your a little sharp or a little flat anyway. I kept them anyway and still gave 5 star because of how tiny and easy to use they are. Perfect for a backpacking guitar

Discretos, no estorban, afinan con ruido ambiental, los tengo en todas mis guitarras, afino en pleno show sin problema de la música de otros instrumentos. Recién nuevo no encuentra las notas pero al usarlo varias veces funciona perfecto. Me gustan mucho, altamente recomendables.

o produto funciona

I love clip-on tuners, as they free-up space on the floor, but the clip-on aspect itself has always been kind of annoying because they’re usually not super attractive, and they always have to come off for some reason; guitars usually won’t fit in the case with a clip tuner; maybe the tuner clamp degrades the finish if it’s left on; the guitar won’t hang on the wall; someone asks to use it, etc. I have an acoustic guitar with a built-in tuner, and I have always wondered (except for Gibson’s failed robot tuner) why it’s not more common to permanently attach a tuner to an electric guitar; this tuner accomplishes that. It’s so low-profile that it never gets in the way — visually or functionally — as other clip-on tuners can.

I no longer have to remove the tuner for any reason; I can put the guitar in its case, and it fits; I can hang it on a wall hanger, and it fits. Because this thing is screwed to the instrument: I’m not going to lose it. If someone asks to borrow my tuner: the answer is going to be “no” because it’s attached. It’s also completely invisible from the front of the instrument.

I love that I can rotate the display 4 different ways to accommodate a variety of head-stock designs, and the display is bright and clear. I compared it to a Peterson StroboClip HD, and — while I will still use the Peterson for intonation — the accuracy was pretty tight; I would not have any problems intonating with this tuner in a pinch.

Installation was incredibly easy, and requires no permanent modification to your instrument; all you have to do is remove and reinstall a single screw, and this tuner even comes with a couple of slightly-longer screws to account for the thickness of the tuner. If you don’t care about permanent modification: you can put this thing literally anywhere with just a single screw. If you’re a classical stringed instrument player — maybe you play cello — you could easily just screw this thing to your bridge.

I like this tuner so much that I’m pretty tempted to install one on every stringed instrument I own.

Edited to add: I went to install another one of these on my son’s 41-year-old guitar, and one of the screws supplied with the tuner broke in half after a few turns; I had to dig out a bunch of wood around the broken screw to extract it, and then had to dowel the hole. I wish D’Addario wouldn’t include such garbage screws with these. Consider using your own steel screws for installing one of these, especially if it’s in an older instrument where the wood is aged/hardened. I removed a star from my review for these awful screws.

Fitment/appearance and usability/convenience:
I have it attached to the E string tuner on my bass, so it hides behind the headstock and is invisible from the front. It detects every string, although it takes a while to pick up the A string – not a long time, but just a couple of beats extra instead of the usual one-second response. It’s always there so it’s an easy bit of the routine to tune before i start anything.
Accuracy:
Compared it to a Fender clip-on and it was surprisingly accurate – when I had a bar on one side of the note solid and the other side blinking on this (so not quite perfect, but close according to it), the Fender said I was bang on the money (multiple tests, multiple strings) . From that my takeaway is that you can tune quite fine if you have the patience to get both blue bars solid – to be honest I haven’t managed it yet.
UI:
The display is bright and easy to read even though it’s tiny – all the relevant bits show up with different colours. To be fair, I’ve only done standard tuning on this but the other modes seem to be easily accessible and available. It’s usually just a button press to power on, tune four strings, button press power off and I’m done. Worth the money.