Customer Reviews

Intelli IMT-600 Guitar, Violin and Chromatic Clip-on Tuner

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I was invited to participate in a jam session at a friend's large family get-together. When it came time to tune up one of the other players handed me an Intelli IMT-600 clip-on tuner. I had never used this type of tuner before and had never seen one before. Having an older type of tuner which required me to find a spot in front of the guitar (and music played by others would interfere in the tuning) I was amazed by how well the IMT-600 worked, especially when all the other musicians were playing their instruments at the same time. Immediately upon returning home that evening I found the product at Amazon and ordered one. When it arrived I was very impressed with its accuracy not only in tuning my Martin HD-28, and my Ibanez classical guitar, but how well and easy it was to use for my mandolin, and even my Les Paul electric. The price is phenomenal for what you get and the convenience of having a tuner which clips to the headstock is fabulous. The ONLY negative to which I have found for this product is that it is a bit slow tuning the low E-string. Other than that I can't recommend this enough. It is a wonderful product.

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Many reviews on this tuner and its brothers have mentioned slowness on acquiring the guitar low E. This video shows how minor (or even non-existent) the issue is if you put the tuner on the side of the headstock closest to the low E.

If you VIEW the video in FULL SCREEN, you can see the digital pointer, and how it moves as the two low E's on a 12-string guitar are tuned up to correct pitch.

Sorry about video quality (Amazon reduces their quality) and the cars in the background (I needed lots of light in the background, and I did not want to bring my guitar out into the snow).

The tuner also worked for a friend's acoustic/electric bass guitar. It took about a second to get the low E (on the bass guitar, remember), but it got it. He was able to tune his bass, and I my 12-string while a piano was playing (we were about 10 feet behind the soundboard of an upright acoustic piano that was also being amplified). Great tuner!!

When the Mode Selector Switch is set to "Chromatic", the tuner allows you to tune to any note, and the display will indicate the note, e.g., "D#". When the Mode Selector Switch is set to "Guitar" or "Violin", the tuner allows you to tune only to those notes that exist on a standard-tuned guitar or violin. E.g., when set to "Guitar", it allows you to tune only to the six standard guitar notes, and will display either "6E", "5A", "4D", "3G", "2B", or "1E". The Mode Selector Switch seems to have no affect on the tuner's performance. (This is a good thing because it works perfectly.)

This tuner does what it's suppose to, and does it well! My biggest problem is finding a spot on the violin that wont make it overly cumbersome to tune with this thing in the way. I like putting it on the top of the scroll, it's still a bit of a pain in the butt to tune the pegs with this thing on, but it's definitely manageable.

Warning! Don't attach this to the back of the violin neck, I managed to scratch a music store's really expensive violin as a result. I had to sneak outta there!!

The tuner works as expected, but should not be parked indefinitely on the guitar. I left the tuner on my nearly pristine Rickenbacker 360/12 for about two weeks, resulting in an ugly stain on the polished finish. The stain is on the light colored portion of wood, and is very noticeable. I was unable to remove the stain with non-abrasive cleaners, so the discoloration must have seeped into the finish. Bummer.

Amazing value. My acoustic guitar comes with an internal tuner so I got one of these for my electric and one for my neice's violin. Wow, I just clip it on the head of the guitar and cannot believe that it picks up the vibrations on an electric without the need to get it closer to the strings. This is really amazing to me, and the backlight is just an AWESOME plus. I truly recomend this! It is much smaller than what it looks like, it is about 1.5" square. You don't need anything else if you play violin or guitar as a hobby and if you're a traveling musician, you will still want this along with your other types of tuners. As a matter of fact, I used it for my Oud (an Arabic predecessor of the lute instrument). You'll love it! Take care and keep playing :)

Apologies to the serious musicians who use this device (and presumably use it in much more advanced ways) but as the non-musical father of a 9 year old who is learning to play the violin, this is a godsend. Just attach it to one of the pegs, pluck the string and it will tell you the note in easy letters, adjust and voila, your child has a chance of practicing and having the chance of hitting the right notes.

At a street price under $20, it's hard to fault this little clamp-on electronic tuner. It has settings for Chromatic, Guitar and Violin (should I ever really want to punish myself).

A number of people have noted problems picking up the 6E (low-E) string on a guitar. When my unit arrived, I was delighted to find it had no trouble at all doing this, but then I went and adjusted the truss rod to tune out a slight bow in the neck, and now the tuner won't pick up the low-E string at all. It doesn't matter where I clamp the tuner onto the headstock, though I admit there is little room on my guitar's slim headstock to move the thing around much. I get around this problem by fingering the 6th string to the fifth fret and tuning it as a 5A, which it has no trouble at all picking up.

(Note from a couple of weeks later) I've been experimenting with this and I find that if I mute strings 1-5 with my finger and pick string 6 down near the bridge, the tuner picks it right up.

The only other problem I have is that you need to have the string tension pretty close to find the note you're looking for. This will be an issue when it comes time to re-string, especially if you're starting from scratch after removing all the strings to clean and polish the fretboard. It would be nice if you could set the note you were looking for and have the tuner tell you low or high while you close in on it. I don't know if any of these small tuners are any better in this regard.

So in closing, it isn't as useful as it could be, and it ain't perfect at what it does do, but for the price and the functionality it brings, I have to like it.

This tuner is a great value. It has a very clear read-out face with calibrations that allow quick, reliable tuning. The on/off switch is easy to find and fuctions quickly without having to hold the button down forever to get the device to turn on and off. The ratio of guitar tuner to the chromatic tuner is set up to allow you to turn your string and not have to go back and forth to get the right tension on the string and bring your string into tune. For a good price and good accuracy, this is the best tuner I have.

I bought this for my violin but also planned on using it for my guitar. It works wonderfully with my violin, it responds very quickly and doesn't pick up any back ground noise. I can even play songs with it clipped on to make sure i'm hitting the right notes.

I tried it on my guitar and it was not so helpful. I first clipped it on the headstock but it kept on flipping around to notes that aren't even close to each other. Then i clipped it on the rim of the soundhole which actually worked pretty well but it was kind of an awkward place for it to be.

Overall, i would recommend it for the violin but i wouldn't for the guitar.

I use Intelli IMT-600 Clip-on Tuner for turning my kid's violin.
The clip-on feature is very convenient. Its small size makes it easy
to carry with any music instrument. It is easy to use and fairly accurate.
The only drawback I noticed is that it is not very sensitive to the G string.
When I pluck the E (or A or D) string once, the tuner will pick up
the signal immediately. When I pluck the G string, the turner will
pick up the signal only after 2 or 3 plucks. This may have something to do
with the small size of the violin (1/8).
Overall, it is still a very good turner for the money.