KORG AW 1 Acoustic and Wind Micro Tuner :: Education by Design Store

Customer Reviews

Great tuner

2006-07-20
I first used this tuner in Seattle at Joe Vinicoe's archtop.com home store. I bought two, one for home and one for work (for a student that has to tune 40 acoustic guitars twice a week for class guitar courses at The University of British Columbia). It works equally well for acoustic and electric guitars. Quick and easy. I experience few problems with the lighting on the control panel that others have expressed; then again, I don't use it in dark settings. I have a Roland digital tuner as well, but stopped using it because the Korg is such a dream to pop on a headstock and tweak any fretted instrument. I highly recommend it--it's a great little tuner.

Give Me a Break

2006-07-01
I think the other reviewers went way overboard in their crucifixion of this tuner. Yes, I admit the lack of the backlight is a little bothersome from time to time. However, this is overall a great tuner. I play bluegrass fiddle and this is the most convenient tuner EVER to attach to your fiddle. I use this tuner in jam sessions because when you are playing outside in South Georgia, the environment wreaks havoc on your intonation.

As you can imagine, many times these situations are poorly lit at best and I have had no trouble using this tuner. Once again, a backlight would be great, but even under very dim lighting, I have been able to read it.

I like it. It's small enough to fit in my case or my pocket. It's very accurate and easy to use. When clipped to my fiddle, it is not affected by the other instrument noise at all. I can be sitting next to a banjo picker on one side and a stand up bass on the other and still tune-up without any problem. Once agian, the best part is that it is so easy to attach to my fiddle--the best one yet as far as I'm concerned, and I own several tuners.

I discovered this tuner because we stopped by a music store to try out guitars (my husband is a collector/picker). The sales people were using this tuner. I had never seen one, so I asked about it. They said it was the easiest to move from instrument to instrument, always accurate and very compact. And they had an entire case of tuners and out of all of them, they chose to use this one. I tried it out and bought it on the spot.

So don't be so quick to dismiss this tuner. I have one and I love it. Wouldn't think of returning it. In fact, I'm about to buy a second one as a gift for the guy who works on all my fiddles.

Nice but problematic

2006-04-06
I have this tuner for a year now, well I dont need it often. It has a nice design and it works very well using the vibration of the instrument to show the pitch (I use it for my french horn). It has a Mic too but the vibration sensor (piezo) works definitely better. The other reviewer alreday told it: It is difficult to read, even under full bright light one has to rotate it to the best possible angle. It definitely lacks a backlight, therefore in a concert situation with few light it is not possible to read it.

Good idea, bad execution..

2006-02-20
Lacks R&D. Obviously nobody at Korg bothered putting one of these into service. It's a better idea in theory at least, than the Intellitouch from the accuracy standpoint, but very hard to read. In desperate need of a backlight, I cannot recommend this item which I bought, tried and returned to the dealer. The readout is very small which could have been offset by a backlight, but they spent all their (or more accurately-the buyers') money on the fancy box and a choice of two attachment clips.
A better idea would be a MkII: backlit, with one clip maybe two models- one for each clip type, and a little larger so it can take a DL-2032 or similar longer-lasting battery to power the backlit LCD (as found in the Intellitouch tuner).
Shame on Korg for not knowing better. They could be serious competition for the Intellitouch if they didn't go about developing some of their new stuff in such a half-assed fashion.
KORG take note: give a few to some string musicians to try out before putting yourselves in a position like this where you get crap reviews like mine. I have never written one before, but I made an exception in this case.

clip on tuner

2008-05-25
great tuner that actually picks up the instrument without having to beat the strings off it. the reason is that this tuner picks up via of the clipon itself so it is picking up the vibrations without going all the way through the tuner. downside is that it doesn't have a light for dark stages, maybe they will change this later on, i hope so!!!

Good for general use

2007-05-18
I'm a bassist and this device doesn't pick up the vibrations as accurately as I had hoped, but it does the job when you want to check pitch quickly on stage before a concert. I prefer to use my older Korg tuner for practicing and really fine tuning since this device can be fussy with the low tones. Backlighting would be ideal.

Korg AW-1 Tuner

2007-04-29
I've used my Korg for a couple of months now on my oboe, and I think it's great. It does have to be positioned somewhat carefully, but that's not diffult to do and is a very small price to pay for what it does. I always have it on my instrument in rehearsal (I play in the university bands at Idaho State) and now when there is a difference of opinion about pitch, I am no longer the automatic first suspect. Only once has the director called me out about pitch and that was when I had the third of the chord and didn't realize it.

I also practice with the tuner on the instrument, and it has substantially improved my playing and control of the instrument, because I now know what to aim for and how to get there. This tuner should have an "indispensable" rating, especially for intermediate level students.

The people who panned the tuner for lack of a back-light need to think a little more carefully. Battery life isn't all that long as it is, and those batteries are expensive,(about $5.00). A back-light would cut battery life down by a significant amount. The only solution to that would be a larger battery which would mean the tuner would have to be substantially larger. The Korg engineers made the right choice.

I love it!

2007-03-28
I've used my Korg AW1 for about a year, and I have recommended it to several friends. I'm about to purchase a second one so I don't have to move the tuner between instruments when I double on oboe and English horn in the same concert. I've read a number of comments saying the device is hard to read, but I've never seen this to be a problem except when the battery is about to die.

As an oboist, I use the tuner both for sounding the 'tuning A' for the orchestra and also to check pitch while playing. Obviously I don't use it all the time, and of course it's often more important to match the pitch of other folks in the ensemble, but accurate pitch has never been my biggest strength and so I find that I play much more in tune now that I use the AW1. I'm a bit obsessive about turning the device off when I'm not planning to look at it for a while (say during 32 bars of rests). Doing so, I find I get several months of life from a battery.

Note that the included instruction sheet doesn't indicate how one would attach the device to an English horn (it does show most other instruments, and notes that the device is not really useful for mounting on a flute!). But I've found that it fits well near the top of the upper joint (which is about the same diameter as the lower part of an oboe), tilted somewhat to the left.

I'd love to see a little bit more mechanical durability, as I'm always afraid I'm going to break the stem, and it would be nice to be able to tilt the display upwards (as well as from left to right, which is provided). But overall I'm a very happy AW1 user!

Tuner Review

2007-03-09
It works just as advertised. It is easy to use and read, and even for a borderline technophobe like me, not the least bit intimidating.