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Bertoldo Beyer

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Aug 4, 2024, 4:19:15 PM8/4/24

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Does anyone else experience lack of accuracy with the Helix on board tuner? I cant get a solid guitar tune with the Helix tuner at all. Below is a process of how I have checked them.

On the helix, I have the tuner set to standard 440 pitch, and on my Boss TU-3 I have the same settings. The TU-3 accurately tunes my guitars, but the Helix is off by about -3cents on the some of the higher strings. There is no offsets, and the tuner is set to Guitar.

Any ideas? Is this a known issue?

I put partial blame on us users when we complained that the tuner was too coarse and thus inaccurate. Line 6 added more granularity to the tuner but did nothing about its over sensitivity to harmonics.

I am past that. My blocks are pretty simple. I am using Snaps, so I I generally am I only using one chain, and the Input is set to Guitar. It just does not work, like the above posted, it seems to sensitive.

I do find the tuner a bit more stable when set to 'Guitar' rather than 'Multi' although still feel it needs improvement. I also don't understand why it is more stable when set to 'Guitar'. I have wondered why this is the case and if other operations on the Helix are "disturbed" when "Multi" is selected for the input block. IMHO it should not make a difference and the fact that it does begs the question of whether the processing of the input signal is changed somehow other than just allowing multiple sources for the input. I wonder if this has an impact on other facets of the input signal's processing?

The weird thing mine is doing is on the first string (High E) , its about 3 cents off, and even when not playing, it moves around. All the other strings seem to work fine. Both tuners set to 440hz. I will try to post a video soon. I am not sure what is going on. I should also add that I am on the latest firmware of 2.3.

Yeah brother...you are hitting the infamous Helix Tuner.

It turns out (according to some here) that the Helix Tuner is just TOO GOOD to be able to actually work like it's supposed to. lol

It does actually work better once you set the tuner to guitar only. But it's still a piece of garbage.

It's just barely stable enough to be used onstage (of course no professional guitarist is going to be trying to tune with only a few seconds between songs and spend time turning down tone knobs...hell, I have a Floyd Rose Redmond Series Model K that doesn't even HAVE a tone knob).

But it's definitely not accurate enou...excuse me...it's definitely TOO GOOD to be able to use it quickly and efficiently in the studio. And even onstage it just takes too damn long to tune.

I'd say go ahead and grab a SNARK and forget about the Helix tuner.

I have fought with mine since I first got the Helix back in Oct. of 2015 AND I made vids with my guitar hooked up to a rackmount tuner and a boss pedal tuner at the same time as the Helix and showed the other 2 tuners accurately and quickly and with STABILITY "grabbing" the note and getting me in tune while the Helix was wavering about.

It sucks. But there's nothing you can do about it.

Snark is cheap. Grab one and enjoy the great sounds of the Helix. The tuner is a lost cause.

Yep, many users find the tuner to be frustrating, and a quality outlier in the Helix's otherwise superb features and tones. Then again, a lot of other people find it fine. I've never had any luck with any of the recommendations like turning the tone control, neck pick up etc - still jumps all over the place. Too bad.

I have a Polytune clip always, even if they do eventually work out the quirkiness with the on board tuner. Always have a backup, even when it comes to the tuner. Right now, the Helix tuner is my backup. It seems OK for that job now.

Eddie Van Halen and many other guitarists over the years disconnected the tone controls because they see them as a detriment to their sound. Some guitars are even manufactured without tone controls (like my Redmond Series Model K)

I guess Van Halen, guitarists who have disconnected their tone control, people who own guitars the never had a tone knob, electric violinists, electric mandolin players, and people who use acoustic/electric models that don't include a tone control...can never use a tuner quickly, efficiently, and accurately.

I'm unsure if this idea of turning your tone control off really helps you or not. I'm just saying that I never heard of anything like that ever. Played a long time, worked with hundreds of musicians, employed dozens of guitar techs over the years who restrung, intonated, tuned, and maintained my guitars when I was touring....but never once heard of this "turn the tone control down".

Told us that would be a life-saver when playing a big nightclub that had a DJ pumping music while the band was on break. And he was right. The strings on my guitar would be vibrating from the damn DJ's many times in massive clubs while I was trying to tune. But using 12th fret harmonics while palm muting the other strings allowed me to get around that problem.

12 fret harmonics is another method of reducing the the harmonic modes, and better than turning the tone knob down - if you force the string into 12 fret harmonics (2nd Mode) you automatically eliminate all of the odd modes so you give a much purer signal to the tuner... but at a lower signal level. Middle pickup is picking up mainly mode 1 (fundamental) and mode 2 (octave) so the result is the same.

I've been turning the tone control down to tune for many years, not just with Helix. It's not a new thing.

Eddie didn't have the tuners available we have now. He didn't complain because he's a great musician, and great musicians know how to get a guitar in tune.

As you may have noticed, all the notes in a C major chord, and then some, are present. This natural phenomenon is deeply intertwined with the formation of music. The frequencies in the series are also mathematically related to each other. The 2nd harmonic is roughly twice the frequency in hertz of the 1st harmonic, and in musical terms is one octave up. So, if our sample note is C4, the 1st harmonic would be about 262hz and the 2nd harmonic would be about 524hz. The 3rd harmonic is the first G after the 2nd harmonic and the 4th harmonic is two octaves above the 1st harmonic, or about 1048hz.

When piano technicians tune a piano aurally, meaning by ear, they listen to how the harmonics in the notes they are tuning interact with each other. For the sake of simplicity, which is desperately needed when trying to wade into the seething waters of tuning theory, we will stick with the 1st harmonic and the 2nd harmonic. Just keep in mind that piano technicians and sophisticated piano tuning apps use multiple harmonics to determine the best way forward when tuning.

Since a piano has a high degree of inharmonicity, the frequency of the 2nd harmonic of the C4 will usually be more than twice frequency of the 1st harmonic. In musical terms it will be sharp compared to what it should be in a perfect harmonic series. This means that the C5 that is being tuned must also be sharp, or it will cause beating. If there is too much beating in the tuning of a piano it will sound muddy and inarticulate. Furthermore, that means that the C5 on a piano will most likely be tuned sharper than the C5 on a guitar, because that will help the piano sound more in tune with itself.