Most guitars sound far better when properly tuned. As a novice guitarist, I’m rarely in the position to do this correctly and, as a result, my endless renditions of No Woman No Cry sound awful. Thankfully, the $99 Roadie is here.
We started talking about the Roadie last year and the product recently completed a Kickstarter that rocketed it into reality. The resulting product looks a little bit like a standard guitar tuner but with a weird, knurled knob on the side. To use it you open an app on your phone, connect to the device via Bluetooth, and pluck a string. The app can tell which string you’ve plucked and it will tune it to standard or any number of alternate tunings. For someone who can’t tune by ear it is a godsend. The tuner can create profiles for all your guitars and a built-in headphone jack allows you to connect electric guitars straight into it.
These sorts of robotic tuners aren’t new but none of them are particularly good. The Roadie is nicely built, highly accurate, and easy to use. I’ve been using standard audio-based tuners for years and this is the first time that my guitar has sounded well and truly in tune. While that’s embarrassing to say, it’s the truth.
You can watch our full demo of the tuner above and revel in all my git-fiddle glory. The Roadie is shipping now.