A Guide to Using a Digital Tuner to Tune an Acoustic Guitar
What is a digital tuner?
A guitar tuner is a device that detects and displays the pitch to open strings of a guitar. A digital guitar tuner uses an LCD display to determine if the pitch is lower, higher, or equal to the desired pitch.
Knowing Your Notes
The first thing to familiarise yourself with is the notes on your guitar and which of the strings produces each note. The aim of the digital tuner is to equal the desired note for each string.
From top to bottom. E (top string) - A (2nd) - D (3rd) - G (4th) - B (5th) - E (bottom string with the thinnest string)
The Tuning Pegs (Machine Heads)
The next step is to follow the string to its respective tuning peg. To do this you just need to follow through your string up to the head of the guitar.
Acoustic Steel String Guitar
Classical Nylon String Guitar (Children and Full Size Classical)
Turning The Tuning Pegs
To tune your guitar you will need to gently turn each peg. You will notice as the strings get tighter the note gets higher and turning in the opposite direction will make the strings looser and the note lower.
Note: Be extra careful when tuning the thinner ‘e’ string as too much tightening can snap the string.
Using The Digital Tuner to Tune Your Guitar
Now you are familiar with the process of tuning, use your digital tuner to tune your guitar to pitch perfect!
Take the tuner out of the box and press on. Press the button twice and then scroll through the settings until you reach the ‘guitar’ setting as shown below.
Clip the digital tuner to the head of the guitar ensuring that it is not obscuring the strings or the tuning heads.
Tune one string at a time, starting with the E string. Pluck the string and you will notice that the tuner will light up and display the note. The screen will be blue if the note is not perfectly in tune.
The aim is to adjust the strings by tightening or loosening using the tuning pegs as described above.
Gently turn the tuning pegs until the needle points straight upwards towards the middle and the screen turns green to show that the particular string is now tuned.
Repeat moving down the strings and remember to be careful with the bottom ‘e’ string
As with all guitars, temperature and humidity changes can affect the tuning of a guitar. We recommend tuning your guitar before each practice session.