TC Polytune Clip Tuner Review

The importance of a good tuner can never be stated loud enough.  Tuning’s important to us guitarists (If you don’t know why click here).

There are so many options of tuners these days and honestly I’m so used to my ultra-reliable Boss TU-2 that I don’t have much of a need to go elsewhere…

 

However, I’ve been looking for a decent clip-on tuner for a while and the TC Polytune Clip piqued my interest…

 

The great thing about a good clip tuner is that they work on vibrations so unlike a tuning app that uses a microphone they don’t get confused by background noise..

 

TC Polytune

What’s in the box?

The box is compact. No need to be any bigger. The tuner. A little tiny booklet.

 

First Impressions

The metal clip pleased me.  The tuner has a really solid metal clip with a chunky spring. When there’s a product we use often and it has moving parts you know that will be the bit that falls apart first. This is not going to do that. It has a good rubber lining to protect the guitar.

The rest of the tuner is quite plain, understated.  The 3 buttons are low profile. It’s flat and streamlined.

It came with a battery.  Happy days.

 

How does it fit and look on the guitar?

The clip had solid grip on the headstock. The thing I noticed is that it doesn’t have a rotating head like a lot of other tuners so you can’t angle the display.  The display only moves forwards or backwards.  You can angle the position of the clip on the headstock to suit what you want though.  What I came to feel about this is that the fewer moving parts it has the less things there are to break

Visually – it sits flush against the clip so it goes nice and flat against the headstock which makes it feel a bit more subtle.

 

What does it do?

• Tunes guitars and basses – you can change the instrument on the outside button on the side
• Chromatic – you can tune it whatever tuning you’re in and if you want to check the pitch of a certain fret you can do
• Tunes single strings
• Polytune function – you can tune all 6 strings at once (this was what got my curiosity in the first place)
• Adapts for down tunings to B and Capo use up to fret 7
• Has needle or strobe display
• Display flips over for left / right handed use

 

Price

Its has a slightly higher price point than other tuners in its field.  I’ve seen it for sale from £40-£60 depending where it’s for sale.  It’s really reliable and responsive. The polytune function is great, the metal clip is secure and bound to outlast plastic ones. The display is really vibrant. These are the factors that raise it up and make it worth the spend.

My experience

This is a really reliable tuner. I”ve been using this at the same time as other tuners and they read the same. This display is vibrant, easy to read and responsive. I prefer the needle display but that’s personal preference. It’s so lightweight and the clip is ultra strong that I forget it’s there. I use tuners on the rear of the headstock and it fits flat. For what I use it for I don’t need to access the buttons whilst I’m using it but they are easy to get to.  The on/off button on the end is a bit taffy when I’m playing the guitar. I’d prefer its on the side of the tuner like the function buttons.  That maybe a personal preference though.

The polytune function is the reason I wanted this tuner.  I really marvel at it. I can strum all 6 strings at once and the tuner will show all 6 in the display and show if any are out and in what direction.  For quick reference this is brilliant.  Once you play a single string the display immediately changes to chromatic single string view and I can tune the string on its own. This is a quick change. I’m impressed. I have noticed minor discrepancies a couple of times between what the polytune says and what the single string view reads.  Only a couple of times though. I would always use the 2 in conjunction with each other anyway to fine tune 🤓

Functions I wouldn’t use would be the detune or capo settings. Here’s why… If I set the tuner to fret 5 (for capo use on fret 5) and put my capo on the guitar the tuner adapts the polytune to read correctly in the new tuning. This is impressive. BUT, the single string chromatic reading here still reads the pitch as it is eg if I now play open E string (remember my capo is on fret 5) the tuner tells me this is an A note etc. Correct. This is accurate pitch-wise and really this is the only way this could be done. I think this could be confusing for some people who don’t take this into account or don’t know what to look out for.  A seasoned guitarist would understand this configuration though.  I feel that by changing the tuning on the tuner to capo 5 it implies everything changes and it doesn’t. Only the polytune read-out changes. I already know the pitch names at different frets so I would happily just leave the tuner in E tuning and forgo the effort of changing it on the tuner just for the sake of having the polytune function active in the new tuning. If you have any thoughts on this please let me know in the comments. I’d love to know how other guitarists feel about it.

Conclusion

• It isn’t trying to show off. The functionality speaks for itself. The low-key simple design is all it needs to be.
• Polytune option is great
• Quick responsive display
• Effective, readable display
• Flip-over (left/right hand) screen change
• Power off when not being used
• Comes with a battery
• Light-weight
• Heavy duty metal clip and spring with rubber to grip and protect guitar

 

Happy researching!

Here’s the video review for some extra visuals