Why the Roadie 3 is the Ultimate Tuner for Stringed Instruments

Written By Justin Howell

INTRODUCTION

Hey there! You've found my little corner of the internet.

Welcome to the first installment of what I hope will be a long and fruitful series about some of the gear I love to use in my music-making journey. Today's post is about the Roadie 3 tuner. The Roadie 3 is by far my favorite tuner that I've used, and I've tried a lot of tuners—apps, plugins, clip-on tuners, my ears, etc.

One of the worst ways to tune a guitar is using a plugin tuner. In my experience, they are finicky and have a hard time locking onto the note you're trying to play. This has been true regardless of the quality of the signal path.

THE BASICS OF THE ROADIE 3

The Roadie 3 is an automatic tuner for almost all stringed instruments. It features a quick motor, over 150 preset tunings, a vibrating metronome, and a string winder mode for fast string changes.

As you can imagine, this is the third iteration of the Roadie tuner, and it comes with a handful of improvements over the second version.

WHY I LOVE IT

I love technology in all forms, so naturally, that expands into the world of music. I've had the Roadie 3 for a few years now. After a long search for an endgame tuner, it came down to the Roadie 3, the Korg Pitchblack Pro (now replaced by the Pitchblack Pro X), and a Peterson strobe tuner. Something about the Roadie 3 spoke to me. The Roadie 3 is now an integral part of my music production process, as any good tuner should be.

Some key features:

  • Automatic tuning!

  • The ability to save instrument presets

  • Quick and easy to use

  • Makes string changes so much faster

HOW I USE THE ROADIE 3

This is pretty self-explanatory. Once I'm ready to record something, I'll use the Roadie 3 to tune up, and off we go. Using the instrument presets is awesome. For a while, I kept one of my guitars tuned to Eb standard, and being able to quickly switch between presets made it a breeze.

Sometimes I'll still use other tools when I'm less concerned about accuracy. Plus, there's something about tuning by hand that makes me feel less of a dweeb. But when it’s time to get down to business, I’ll reach for the Roadie 3.

PROS AND CONS

Pros:

  • It's quick

  • It's quiet

  • It's accurate

Cons:

  • Rarely, it gets lost trying to find the low E. I haven't figured out what causes this yet—could be a firmware issue or something.

  • The motor isn't strong enough to tune bass guitars.

  • It does feel a little unnatural to hold the Roadie 3 while it's working its magic.

CONCLUSION

In summary, the Roadie 3 is a portable automatic stringed instrument tuner with a collection of consistently useful features. Though it might sometimes have trouble finding your starting pitch, once it's locked in, you'll get fast and accurate tuning.

What’s your favorite way to tune up?

Justin Howell