Intelli IMT500 Clip on Chromatic Musical Instrument Tuner for Strings

Customer Reviews

Beats the "Intellitouch PT1 Tuner"

2008-07-05
The "Intelli IMT500" is a better product than the "Intellitouch PT1 Tuner" at half the price.

The IMT500

* Is more sensitive, so I don't need to move it around the headstock trying to find a "sweet spot."

* Has a more stable reading; it doesn't "jitter" as much as the PT1.

* Is slightly more compact, although the PT1 *does* have a nicer plastic pouch.

* Has a virtual "dial gauge" rather than the 6 little ">>>", "<<<" arrows of the PT1.

I have abandoned by PT1 and now I will purchase a IMT500 for each of my guitars.

Fair Product

2008-05-13
This product is not as good as the other tuners similar in style and function. This tuner does not have good response for the "E" string on any guitar or bass I have tried it on. I actually have to use the harmonic on the "E" string to get it to register quite often.

It is very accurate, but annoying that it doesn't like the low "E". It even works on my double bass (stand up) for everything except the "E" string when it is clamped on the bridge. I have tried different locations on the headstocks and it makes no difference.

it's what you want..

2008-04-29

Tuners are pretty simple.. and this excels.

Small, always available (on headstock it's out of the way)
Backlit and readable in all lighting conditions.
Accurate and calibratable.
Pretty insensitive to room noise.

It works!!! It's not too expensive..YAY!!

The plastic clip doesn't look necessarily road worthy - but since it hasn't given me any trouble I can't really complain.

tested on : Acoustic Dreadnought body

One GREAT tuner!

2007-06-10
There are scores of chromatic tuners on the market. Most work by using a small built-in microphone that picks up sound waves. In order to be used effectively, the tuning space must be relatively quiet. Many of these tuners have input jacks that allow electric guitars to be connected directly and tuned by the electronic signal they produce. A bunch of years ago a variety of clip-on-microphones began to be marketed. The microphone could be clipped to any instrument and its cord attach to an electronic tuner. Now, anyone could tune an instrument no matter what the background noise.

Then, the Intellitouch tuner hit the market. The entire tuner clipped onto the instrument. One could tune an acoustic instrument in a noisy environment. There was no cord to deal with and the instrument could stay clipped to the headstock or quickly removed and slid into a pocket or case. Talk about convenience. Jams and festivals (bluegrass, folk, whatever) became seas of Intellitouch tuners.

Intellitouch owned the market even though there were so many situations where they did not work well. In particular, they have trouble with the bass notes of dreadnought sized guitars. The more overtones an instrument produces, the worse the tuner behaves. The bass string of a Martin rosewood dreadnought was near impossible to tune without using one of the many workarounds that owners developed. So, it was very much a love-hate relationship. The shortcomings were huge, but the convenience meant that they were tolerated.

Then, came the Intelli. It was an Intellitouch that worked, if not perfectly, then a whole lot better. The amazing thing is that the switch from Intellitouch to Intelli wasn't gradual. Within six months of its introduction, jams and festivals became seas of Intelli tuners. People were throwing their Intellitouches into drawers (if they weren't lucky enough to find a die hard holdout willing to buy one second-hand) to get the Intelli. That's a considerable investment to abandon. But, why not? The Intelli is half the price of the Intellitouch and works a whole lot better. They are so inexpensive that it's easy to justify getting one for the practice area and one for the case so that you don't have to worry about forgetting to pack it.

Anyone who will ever have to tune an acoustic instrument in a noisy environment will quickly find this tuner indispensable. And it works darn well in a quiet environment, too!

Highly recommended!