TC Electronic Polytune review
By Rob Sandall
| Posted in Guitar
The TC Electronic PolyTune - named for its claimed position as the world’s first polyphonic tuner – is in my personal opinion the first serious contender to the reigning king’s tuning throne. Until this rather marvellous product was demonstrated at this year’s Winter NAMM, nothing had come close to touching on the genius of the Boss TU2 or new TU3. That’s because matching the quality and price of the existing market leader simply isn’t enough – unless you’re going to offer something completely unique, people will stick with the name they know. But make no mistake – the Polytune is as unique as it currently gets.
Out of the box, you have a very neat-looking white metal chassis, with a large readout and a sturdy footswitch in the middle. There’s an input on the right, an output on the left, and the front of the unit informs us that it’s true bypass too. So far so good – let’s unscrew the back of the base and hook up the 9V battery, plug in a guitar and… wow.
If you play one string and start tuning, a familiar needle pops up and guides you to pinpoint accuracy. Note also that you can recalibrate your tuning to shift what your natural ‘E’ is – those of you with notes they can’t quite reach in standard tuning will be chuffed, then.
The alternative to the needle mode is ‘stream’, which has an LED flow running either left or right depending on whether you’re flat or sharp. There will be fans of both of these readout types, so it’s nice to have the option.
But if you play all the strings at once – one big sweep across the open strings with your thumb or plectrum – six mini-readouts pop up in a fan formation, with green and red lights indicating if you’re sharp and flat. It might sound gimmicky, but it’s not. It’s absolutely fantastic.
Each string on the TC Poly Tune is tracked individually, so with one strum you have a full heads up as to where you’re falling short or over reaching. Once you get used to taking in the display as one image, you can immediately set about tweaking, and solve any problems extremely quickly. Note, too, that you can set the tuner to work with four- and five-string bass guitars.
The red dots stray further from the green middle-bar depending on how out of tune the string is, so again, once you’re familiar with the sensitivity you can scooch along each of the strings, giving some of your tuners a good half-turn and others a little tweak. After a bit of practice I was quick enough to correct an out-the-box guitar in about 10 or so seconds. You could click this on in a quiet bar of a song to quickly tune-up – it really is that fast.
Drop tunings are covered by the needle system, not the polytuning feature, but the inclusion of a USB port lurking at the back of the unit suggests that updates will be a-go-go in the near future. There’s also an in and out for a power supply, the latter to allow pedal daisy-chaining.
The readout is exceptionally clear on the big screen, and that includes the poly application – an ambient light sensor knows when you need more light and brightens up accordingly.
You’re looking at a pedal at a competitive price, then, that will impress even dyed-in-the-wool fans of other products. The polyphonic mode, which so easily could have been dismissed as a gimmick, is frankly fantastic for quick tuning. I cannot stress enough how significant it could become to gigging guitarists. If I didn’t have a tuner, then right now this would be my first choice, and considering how snobby I can be about pedals, it says a lot about the TC Electronic PolyTune.
Tags: Poly tune review, polyphonic tuner, Polytune review