Boss TU-2 Review

Revision as of 19:28, 23 October 2008

Boss TU-2

Information

Original author: Trond Vold

Weapon: Chromatic Tuner Pedal

Make: Boss

Model: TU-2

Price: About 800 NOK(Norway), About $100 (USA)

Scenario

1. You are just about to go on stage when you realize that your guitar is completly out of tune and there's no time to tune it. 2. You are playing a song in D standard live and you need to get to drop D fast without changing guitar. 3. All your effects flashes with "low battery" and there is no time to replace them (or you just dont want to spend money on hundred of batteries all the time) 4. All the above + the stage is so dark you can't see anything.

Yeah, horrible scenarios! With the this all you need to tune is to turn it on with your foot (or it can be on all the time, your choice) and then you can tune from EADGBE to DAGBE to DGCFAD to CGCFAD or to pretty much anything you want, without having to even touch the tuner after its turned on. The tuner also uses LED lights (or something) so dark stages are no problem.

If you want to be able to supply power to other effects, you have to buy the power adapter and the power cable (picture above)

Chromatic

With the cromatic mode you can tune every single note. If you play something that is not to fast while the tuner is on, you can see all the notes appear on the tuner. This makes it really easy to go from standard tuning to droped tuning.

There has seemed to be some misunderstandings about the chromatic mode. No, the guitar does not tune it self! All I meant was that the tuner can detect all notes on the guitar, not just the regular open strings. This makes it possible to use different tunings, without having to select another tuning at the tuner, and thereby tuning a lot faster.

Standard tuning

You can also set the tuner to use standard tuning, 1 step down or 2 steps down (same for bass guitar). This is the best option if you stay in the same tuning all the time and only uses one of the mentioned tunings. Then there is a number for all the strings instead of the note. In this picture the E-string is perfectly tuned.

Power

As mentioned you need to buy the extra cable and adapter to supply power to up to 7 other effects. You just connect the adapter to the left input and the other effects to the right output.

Pros

The tuner is very accurate! And it also lights up good so you can tune whenever you want without having to connect a regular tuner and finding a light spot on the stage. It's also really practical at home. The muting is a lifesaver if your guitar feeds so much that palm muting doesnt help in quiet parts of the song. The muting is also good if you dont want that horrible sound when swithcing guitars.

Cons

This tuner does not have true bypass, so it steals a little tone. I have tried to connect the tuner and then connect the guitar directly to the amp to hear the difference. The difference is minimal. I'm not really shure if I even heard a difference, it was really hard to tell. But if you have other effects that requiers a direct signal, you might wanna put the tuner in a effect loop.

The tuner has two connecting options. The first result in that when you turn the tuner on, the sound mutes. The other doesnt mute when you turn the tuner on (so you can play with the tuner swithched on). My preferral would be that the tuner is always on, but you could mute it whenever you wanted to. But this isnt possible, so thats a disadvantage.

Alternative tuner

The best alternative would probably be the Peterson Strobostomp. I have heard that its more accurate and I think it has true bypass. But at dark stages it just cant be used.

To sume up this is a great product which is really practical to use especially when playing live, but also at home or band practise. I have seen many professional bands use this, which did not surprise me.