The Tuner Handbook

A tuner tells you whether the string you just played is sharp, flat or right. RigShed’s shows you three things at once — the note, how far off you are, and which string it thinks you’re aiming for — so you can tune without guessing what it wants from you.

18 tunings · guitar, 7-string and bass · interface or microphone

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Before you start

Open the Tuner tab and it starts listening straight away — the Listening toggle in the top right switches itself on when you arrive. Turn it off when you’re done and it stops analysing.

Next to that toggle are two small buttons: a cable and a microphone. That’s where the tuner is listening from.

• Cable is your audio interface. Use this whenever your guitar is plugged in — it’s cleaner, and the room can’t interfere with it.
• Microphone uses the device’s built-in mic, for an acoustic or for when you haven’t plugged anything in.

If an interface is connected the tuner picks it automatically, so most of the time you can leave this alone. It only overrides you if you haven’t chosen the mic yourself.

Your pedals don’t affect it

The tuner listens to your guitar before the amp stage, so whatever you’ve got on the board makes no difference to the reading. You don’t need to bypass a fuzz or turn the gain down to tune — play the string and it reads it.

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Reading the display

Four things are telling you the same story from different angles. Once you know which one to look at, tuning takes about four seconds a string.

What you’re looking at	What it tells you
The big note name	What you’re playing right now. A dash means it can’t hear anything definite yet — play the string again, a bit harder
The line under it	Which string of your chosen tuning you’re closest to, e.g. “String 5: A2”. This is the tuner guessing your intent, and it’s how you know you’re tuning the string you think you are
The cents strip	How far off, and which way. Left is flat, right is sharp. The marked range runs from −50 to +50 cents, with a shaded zone in the middle
The Hz line at the bottom	The raw frequency and the exact cents offset. Ignore it while tuning; it’s there when you want to check something precisely

The colours are the shortcut

You don’t have to read numbers. The dot on the cents strip changes colour as you get closer, and that’s the fastest way to work:

• Red — more than 15 cents out. Keep turning.
• Orange — within 15 cents. Slow down, small movements.
• Green — within 5 cents. That’s in tune.

The round LED at the top goes green at the same time and stays green for a second after you get there. That hold is deliberate: it means you can nail the note, look away to move to the next string, and still catch confirmation out of the corner of your eye.

The string dots

Along the bottom of the display is a dot for each string in your tuning. The one you’re closest to lights up and its name goes bold, and it turns green when that string is in tune. It’s a quick way to see how far through the guitar you are without keeping count.

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Choosing a tuning

At the bottom of the tuner is a button labelled TUNING, showing the tuning you’re currently on and which instrument it belongs to. Tap it and you get the full list, grouped by instrument, with the string spellings written out so you can check you’ve picked the right one before you start turning pegs.

There are 18 tunings across four instruments.

Instrument	Tunings
Guitar (6-string)	Standard · Drop D · Drop C · Drop B · Half Step Down · Whole Step Down · DADGAD · Open D · Open G · Open E · Open C
Guitar (7-string)	Standard 7 · Drop A
Bass (4-string)	Standard · Drop D · Half Step Down
Bass (5-string)	Standard 5 · Drop A

Pick the tuning first

The tuning you’ve selected is what the “String N” line and the string dots are measured against. If you’re in Drop D and the tuner is set to Standard, it will still read your low string correctly as D — but it’ll tell you you’re a whole tone flat of E, because that’s what you asked it to compare against.

So set the tuning before you tune, not after.

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Getting a steady reading

The tuner smooths what it hears rather than showing you every twitch: it takes a median across the last handful of readings, ignores movements smaller than about three cents, and updates ten times a second. The result is a needle that settles instead of dancing.

That smoothing is why the display can lag your playing very slightly. It is doing that on purpose, and it is the reason you can tune to five cents by eye.

Symptom	Cause
Dash instead of a note	Nothing definite to read. Play the string on its own, a little harder, and let it ring
Note name looks dim	It has a reading but isn’t confident — usually a dying note or a noisy room. Play it again
Reading jumps around	Two strings ringing at once, or a very quiet note. Mute the others and pick one string cleanly
Nothing at all on mic	The device mic needs permission, and a loud room will swamp it. Plug in if you can
Right note, wrong string number	You’re between two strings of the selected tuning, or you’re on the wrong tuning entirely. Check the TUNING button

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A working order

1. Pick your tuning from the TUNING button.
2. Check the cable/mic buttons match how you’re plugged in.
3. Play one string, let it ring, and watch the dot.
4. Turn until it goes green and the LED lights.
5. Move to the next string — the dots along the bottom show you where you are.
6. Go round twice. Tuning one string pulls the others slightly, so the second pass is what actually gets you there.