tc electronic PolyTune Clip Tuner

I bought this tuner on July 1st 2015. It arrived amazingly fast, in less than 24 hours from Germany to the Netherlands!!

I bought the tuner to use for (intonation) practice on double bass (bowed). I also have a Korg CA1 tuner that is very good and reliable but this has not illuminated display which can be hard to read sometimes. It also is not the fastest tuner and not a clip-on (mic).

The Polytune clip does have very good visible LEDs. It also appeared to be very fast looking at the video's online. It tried it on one of my guitars and it works just fine in all modes. And yes, it is very fast.

But... on double bass not so much luck... The tuner has some difficulty picking up the signal from the E string. It does seem to work when plucked but when bowing it just does not work very well. On all other strings it works fine (in both guitar as well as bass mode).

I use the tuner on the bridge of the double bass so I can look at it when practicing scales etc. Being almost horizontal the tuner cannot decide its position so it frequently switches orientation. Of course this will not happen on (bass) guitar but it would have been nice if the gyro could be disabled.

And the final thing.. I read in the manual that the Polytune switches off automatically after 3 minutes to save the battery. I, mistakenly, thought that would be after the tuner had not been USED for 3 minutes. But this is not the case so it shuts off in the middle of a scale.

The build quality is OK. The plastic looks a bit flimsy, it would have looked so much better in stainless steel. The clip works fine and the display is very bright.

All in all the Polytune clip on is not exactly what I expected from it. Of course this is mainly due to the way I want to use it (not just tuning). I will give it another chance during a longer practice session to decide whether I'll keep it or maybe return it

EDIT: after just two days of careful use at home the rubber of the moving part of the steel clap came off. When I finally found it again on the other side of the room I noticed the rubber being split in two on one side. This should not happen!!

This is an amazing piece of equipment.

The main feature of this tuner is the polyphonic tuning: you just strum all your 6 strings at once, and the tuner shows tunings of all strings simultaneously. This saves you a lot of time.

I am still quite a guitar novice, and tuning always feels like a chore, so I often skipped it. With this tuner it takes just 5-10 seconds to make sure you are still in tune, and the subsequent tuning is also pretty quick, so you are not tempted to skip the tune check before practice.

Of course, it also has a normal "needle" mode, and the switch between the two is automatic (strum 1 string vs. strum multiple strings). The display is bright, and the visuals/animations are nice. It's not an LCD display, but I like it: the dot-matrix display gives it a somewhat "retro" vibe. The clip strength seems OK. A battery is included too.

It also has some advanced features: tuning for bass guitars (albeit no polyphonic mode here), up/down tuning + capos, and different reference pitches. That's way too complicated for me just yet, but I can see myself using capo tunings in the future.

The only "downside" is that this tuner is expensive (35 EUR), but if you are short on money, and plan to upgrade to this later, I would suggest to use a smartphone app for a while, and save up for this unit.

The tc electronic PolyTune Clip Tuner is an incredibly convenient, fast, and lightweight way to keep your guitar in tune. I was initially torn between this model and the UniTune, but ultimately went with the PolyTune and couldn't be happier with my choice. The ability to strum all strings and instantly see any deviations from target pitch is a killer feature. The tuner's display is bright and stylish. My only wish is that the clip could be slightly larger and have more degrees of freedom, as it's difficult to adjust it for an optimal viewing angle without removing it entirely from the guitar. This can be a bit of a hassle when placing the guitar in a case, as the tuner needs to be removed and reattached each time. Overall, the PolyTune Clip Tuner is a top choice among tuners in this class.