The Intellitouch Tuner is a tuner

Electronic tuner

The term electronic tuner can refer to a number of different things, depending which discipline you wish to study.In the Discipline of radio frequency electronics an electronic tuner is a device which tunes across a part of the radio frequency spectrum by the application of a voltage or appropriate...

 that can clip on to instruments such as the guitar

Guitar

The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...

, ukulele

Ukulele

The ukulele, ; from ; it is a subset of the guitar family of instruments, generally with four nylon or gut strings or four courses of strings....

, violin

Violin

The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....

, trombone

Trombone

The trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. Like all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player’s vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate...

, and many others. The Intellitouch tuner is a vibration-based tuner, which gives it many advantages over traditional microphone

Microphone

A microphone is an acoustic-to-electric transducer or sensor that converts sound into an electrical signal. In 1877, Emile Berliner invented the first microphone used as a telephone voice transmitter...

-based tuners. Because it does not use a microphone, it ignores background noise, allowing it to be used effectively in very noisy environments.

Tuning with an Intellitouch Tuner is easy. For example, to tune a guitar, you pluck the strings (E, A, D, G, B, E), one string at a time, read the display on the Intellitouch Tuner, and turn the tuning pegs accordingly.

The Intellitouch Model PT1 was most popular for guitars such as the acoustic guitar

Acoustic guitar

An acoustic guitar is a guitar that uses only an acoustic sound board. The air in this cavity resonates with the vibrational modes of the string and at low frequencies, which depend on the size of the box, the chamber acts like a Helmholtz resonator, increasing or decreasing the volume of the sound...

, bass guitar

Bass guitar

The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....

, electric guitar

Electric guitar

An electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker...

, etc. However, later models, such as the Intellitouch PT10 or PT40, can be used on just about any instrument.

History

The Intellitouch Tuner model PT1 was created in 1995 by Mark Wilson of OnBoard Research Corporation. At the time it was created, it was the first of its kind, and a huge leap of innovation. Using a musical instrument's vibrations to measure pitch by a device that attaches by a clip had never been done before. It allowed for tuning in noisy environments or on dark stages while other musicians were playing. The Intellitouch PT1 eventually became extremely popular and spawned an entire industry of clip-on instrument tuners.

In January of 2011, OnBoard Research created yet another innovation, a fully chromatic tuner with the displayed note, integrated with a capo. They also introduced North America's first rechargeable tuner, the Intellitouch PT40, in January of 2011.

The manufacturer of Intellitouch tuners, OnBoard Research Corporation, has introduced many new models of Intellitouch tuners since the company's start in 1995. The Intellitouch PT10 and PT10XL were introduced in 2009. The Intellitouch PT30 Classic was introduced in 2010. The PT40 Rechargeable Tuner, the CT1 Capo Tuner, and the PT20 Compact Classic Tuner were all introduced in January, 2011.

External links

The manufacturer's official Facebook page.

The manufacturer's web site: www.tuners.com.

• blogs.oreilly.com.