Asbridge Audio

The DOD Tuna pedal was the first pedal I owned (also one of the first tuner pedals ever made), but while it mostly did the trick, it was never y’know...good. It had a serious fatal flaw - what I’ll call “resonant confusion”. If you play an open note on your guitar, other strings will vibrate in response, and sensitive tuners often pick up these notes as well. My friend Brian had a similar problem with his rackmount tuner and he told me to switch it to my neck pickup and role the tone all the way off when tuning sort of desensitize the tuner and avoid picking up too many resonant frequencies. This also prevents the tuner from picking up too many overtones on the low notes. What a pain though! Every time I tuned, I had to switch to my neck pickup and roll off the knob. Thankfully, tuner pedal technology has advanced beyond the Tuna Pedal.

The Boss TU series was a big leap forward from the Tuna, in that it filters out the resonances more cleanly and gives you an accurate reading. I have used them before and I’ll say that they’re light years ahead of the Tuna Pedal. They filter out the resonances and respond very quickly when you play a note - especially the newest iteration - the TU-3. You can find a brand new TU-3 on Amazon for about $100. 

While the TU-3 is great, there are lower cost models that do about the same thing. The Snark SN10s cost about half as much. They’re cool tuners, and I really like the simple, bold graphic display. Check out Snark Tuners on Amazon.