Korg OT-120 Orchestral Tuner

As an absolute self taught beginner, I have found this instrument to be valuable and easy to use. I don’t even play a piano, but my two sons and wife do. It costs over $200 per visit to get a tuner out to our rural location and I think there is only one tuner in town. Our upright piano requires constant tuning, and so I decided to roll up my sleeves and give it a shot, after all, if someone else can learn how to do it, so can I.

Researching the Internet and Amazon, I found the tools and reference materials to make an educated decision on what to buy. I selected this instrument along with a book, “Piano Servicing, Tuning, and Rebuilding: For the Professional, the Student,…” and tools to make the necessary adjustments. Within an hour of receiving all the tools, I re-tuned four badly out of tune keys. The wife and kids were impressed and the tools paid for themselves after the first attempt. With the help of the book and the Korg OT-120, I should get better at it over time. even my 12 year old son understood what was going on as he watched me (his dad) adjust the piano strings back into the correct sounding notes.

I haven’t used the Korg enough yet to give a detailed review, but I just know when I set the dial for “Manual” and watched the meter needle swing to the center, I was getting the results my family was hoping for.

The Korg comes with a very nice storage case and I did pay the extra money to get the plug in microphone. Maybe when I get better at it, I’ll come back and give a better review. I just know this instrument works as expected and gets results.

Un exelente producto en mi caso lo uso para mis guitarras electricas y la verdad es muy util para afinar y para octavar la guitarra por locque es muy bueno que tenga una aguja analogica. En cuanto a su construccion es de plastico y solo la caratula de alumunio pero se ve de buena calidad y viene con un estuche muy bonito para guardarlo el cual lo protege muy bienaparte de la señalizacion por aguja tiene su pantalla digital y la cual puedes encender en luz naranja pars una mejor visibilidad con poca luz.
En cuestion de alimentacion lo puedes hacer con un eliminador de 9 volts o con pilas AAA , NO VIENE CON ELIMINADOR SOLO TRAE BATERIAS. Yo lo uso con baterias recargables y funciona bien.
Lo unico pari mi que no me gusto fue el boton de encendido el cual es de plastico pero se ve muy sencillo y no se sinte de muy buen calidad. POR ULTIMO YO SIN DUDAR RECOMIENDO QUE LO COMPREN CREO QUE VALE LA PENA. ESTOY MUY AGUSTO CON EL AFINADOR

My Boss TU 12 tuner started to fail and this Korg OT 120 is a fantastic replacement. The tunings are very precise, and the tuner is easy to use. I do studio recording and precision tuning is essential. I love the analog meter. The digital display is a bit hard to read with the tuner standing, but very easy with it laying flat. Both mic and input tunings work well that way so the display is not an issue for me. I highly recommend this tuner.
Follow up to this review. I am so impressed with this tuner that I bought a backup for my recording studio. This is precision tuning.

I had an older Korg chromatic tuner that I used for years, which was made right on the cusp of the great change from analog to digital devices. I still do use it, despite a couple of broken switches, but it is kind of bulky, so I found myself shopping around for a new one.

I had pretty specific requirements: I wanted both digital readout and an analog meter. I needed to be able to “tweak” the pitch reference by cents, since I sometimes work with microtonal systems and temperments other than 12-tone equal temperment. I wanted something with an internal mike and speaker, for portability, but also with input so that I could attach an external clip-on mike.

The OT-120 pretty much fit the bill on all of these points. It includes a number of stock tuning systems built-in (12tet; meantone; Werkmeister etc.), but also allows you to create your own, as well as to alter any reference pitch by +/- 50-cents on the fly. There is a digital readout that supplies both the pitch in scientific notation (C4 = middle C), and the deviation, if any, in cents. There is also an analog meter that allows for some pretty fine gradations of pitch, and which centers when your pitch matches the reference pitch. The accuracy is quite good: in comparing results on this tuner to a strobe tuner, it seems to get within +/- 1 cent, on average; for a non-strobe tuner this is close to phenomenal.

There is also a sensitivity control which adjusts the response time to an external signal to one of three levels: fast, medium, or slow. This is very handy if you have a source that takes a while to “settle in” to its fundamental pitch, such as a long string with a low pitch. The “fast” mode is good for sounds that lock-in fairly quickly, such as wind instruments.

My one caveat with this tuner is that the case is far less well made than that of my old Korg tuner, which has seen a lot of hard use (and abuse) and is still in one piece and working. Although the OT-120 looks in some pictures as though it has a metal case, it’s really silver-grey plastic, with a thin aluminum front panel. And the plastic isn’t all that heavy-duty — a moderate squeeze with the fingers easily opens up the seam in the side, and I get the feeling that I could probably do permanent damage to the case simply by crushing it in my hand. This is unfortunate given the circumstances in which this device is most likely to be used. One could easily imagine that a few falls from a music stand to the stage floor might kill this tuner — and I seriously doubt it will last as long as my old one. This is the only thing that cost the tuner a star.

Would have been nice if an AC power supply and external mike were included, but these were easily obtained as add-on accessories.

That said, these tuners have come down considerably in price — almost 50% from what they were selling for a year or two ago, so the cost savings does mitigate the flimsy case construction, somewhat. Still, I’d have happily paid $20 more to get an actual metal case, our at least double thickness on the current plastic case.

There are a lot of instrument-specific tuners, with far fewer features out there, which may be more durable. But if you need to tune a lot of different kinds of instrument (as I do), or if you need to be able to design your own tuning tweaks (A=445, instead of 440, for example), Then this is definitely the most versatile tuner available for the price. Even with the light-weight case, I’d certainly buy another of these.

Vraie accordeur professionnel

Si lo que quieres es un aunque sencillo para el día a día, con culaquier app o afinador barato te valdrá de sobra, pero si quieres darte el gustazo de un afinador excepcional, no te arrepentirás. Puedes escoger entre muchos sistemas de afinación, distintas velocidades de medición y, una de sus grandes opciones, usas pinza (no incluida) tiene un modo en que te devuelve por el altavoz la nota afinada (en el sistema elegido) más cercana a la que estás emitiendo; una idea muy buena para trabajar afinación de desarrollando el oído (y no la vista). Caro pero a mí me ha comprobado el capricho.
Por cierto, tiene buen acabado, una funda sencilla, luz en la pantalla…