Suitable tuner for marimba bars?

[Bence Varga]

Hello!

I have rough tuned a set of marimba bars a few years ago, and now I have enough time to fine tune them. Back then, I was using my iBook laptop with the build in mic. and a software called Perfect Pitch to tune them, but the tuner gave quite rhapsodic results. This time, for fine tuning, I would like to use something that is more precise. In our town there is a marimba maker, who is using the Korg DT-1 Pro rack style tuner for more than 10 years with success. I could buy a Korg brand rack tuner, but I saw they are more expensive that other multi-intruments tuners from Korg. I wonder what causes this price difference? Do they determine pitches more precisely? I thought these rack ones were only made for the sake of guitarists or musicians who want to include them in ther effect shelf among other rack style effects. I saw Korg is selling the OT-120 Orchestral Tuner. The reviews are promising. Is that tuner as good as these rack tuners, or that is less trustable?

I also saw that Peterson Tuners are selling a software called StroboSoft, a multi instrument tuner, that doesn't cost that much. I wonder if it could be used to measure the pitches from the marimba bars? I have an Audio Technica ATR-25 microphone, I could use that for this purpose.

Could you share your experiences? If you suggest tuners from other brands, I don't mind. But it would be good to keep the prices under 100$, but the maximum I can afford now is 150$. If the rack tuners are much more correct, I can buy them, but if these smaller, cheaper tuners are just as good as the rack ones, like the Korg OT-120, I would choose those instead to spare some money.

[John Mueller]

Bence,
I have and Android phone and I have had a lot of success with the app "DaTuner Pro" It has a strobe fuction. fast responce and is very accurate. After I adjusted it to A=442 (most pro made keyboard perc. is tuned to a 442) I tried it out on our school's marimba, vibes and orch. bells and it gave me very accurate and repeatable results. Nice thing is the display shows how many cents the pitch is off and a db level.

[Tim Richardson]

This is a very old post but maybe the OP checks occasionally.

I wonder if piano tuning software would be a better choice.

Tunelab is one of several electronic tuning devices (ETD)used by piano tuners. It is available as a free demonstration download. It measures frequency accurately but also calculates inharmonicity. You can use it with a laptop and any USB microphone.