This is cool.

Peterson Tuners are (or at least, should be) ubiquitous in the world of professional guitar techs and luthiers. A Peterson strobe tuner – or, more recently, their Virtual Strobe – is the top of the heap when it comes to tuning accuracy. Most tuners that are available to the man (or lady) on the street are reasonably accurate. The emphasis must be on reasonably though. A strobe-type tuner allows you to ‘see’ finer increments of tuning than most LED or needle tuners can realistically display. This is the reason that a good tech will prefer a strobe tuner when performing a proper setup for instance.

This sort of accuracy comes at a price though and, although Peterson has continually introduced cheaper models, their price range still tends beyond what most are willing to pay for a tuner.

Then they released iStroboSoft for the iPhone a while back. At US$9.99, it was a pretty cheap way into the world of strobes.

Now they’ve gone one better and, for a limited time, you can get a copy of iStroboSoft (iTunes link) from the App Store for the not-so-princely sum of US$0.99 (or local equivalent). You’d be mad not to. It’s about the best tuner app in the Store.

iPhone people can use the built in mic (and this comes with an input boost facility which is nice) although using an adapter cable would probably be more accurate and easier. You can buy a cable from Peterson but I’d wager that you could get yourself something (¼” jack socket to 3.5mm stereo plug**) that will do the job in Radio Shack or your local equivalent. iPod Touch users will need an external mic.

Go. Get. Strobe.

**UPDATE: D’oh. I stupidly posted this info and my brain just assumed it was ok. I realised a couple of days later that it’s not. A 3.5mm stereo jack won’t do the trick as – to the best of my knowledge – the mic input for an iPhone is on one of the rings in a 4-way jack plug. A 4-way jack has a tip, two rings and a shaft and a stereo jack only has tip, ring, shaft. It’s still (probably) a relatively easy matter to knock-up an adapter cable – especially if you don’t listen to me. Sorry for any hassle.