Guitar tuners are probably an effect pedal that is pretty low on most people’s priority list after the endless stream of boutique pedals released every year. To me a guitar tuner has to have the following features, fast response, accurate, looks cool. Previously the coolest looking tuner I have seen is the Korg Pitchblack but I’ve always also always liked the look white Boss TU-2/3, the TC Electonic PolyTune combines the cool of the Korg with the reliability of the Boss and in white, you don’t see many white pedals.

I first heard of the PolyTune when I saw the following video little did I know, and indeed nor did almost anyone know that this was in fact a sneak preview of the software that controls the PolyTune.

This video caused quite a stir and even had a major industry figure fooled enough for him to make the guy an offer, I won’t say who but it isn’t hard to find out even though the comment has since been removed. You can’t blame the guy though who wouldn’t want to turn this amazing invention into pedal form, well obviously this was a TC Electronic engineer and if he wasn’t originally he sure must be now. TC Electronic squeezed the software into a very tasty little pedal, simple but elegant in true Scandinavian style.

The PolyTune is really simple to use, strum all strings and you are in polyphonic mode where you can quickly see all your strings and whether they are in tune, pick an individual string and it immediately switches to single note tuning mode using an LED needle to show an accurate representation of your note tuning. The response is incredibly quick, pretty much instant, something I have only previously seen on the Turbo Tuner. You can adjust the tuning if you are tuned down to Eb or D or even B by clicking a button on the top of the unit, it will allow you to drop a semi-tone at a time. This only works for all your strings being dropped, if you use drop D the unit has no idea and will show the bottom string as flat but you can always tune that string individually I don’t think it is a problem. The PolyTune saves this information even after it is powered down, making sure you only have to set how you want things to happen once.

The display automatically adjusts brightness to match surroundings in case you are using a 9v battery to save on power and of course it is True Bypass as the pedal will spend most of its life first in your signal chain switched off. Another cool feature is the power out which lets you use a daisy chain cable to power another unit off the PolyTune. Finally there is an undocumented USB port which I assume is for software updates, not something you see on your average tuner.

TC Electronic say “We can’t make tuning fun. But we can sure make it a whole lot easier.”, I disagree, tuning just got fun!