This whole post could be a rant about how boring tuner reviews are, but I'll try to stay on point here. Boss has put out a new series of tuners. The chief among these is the Waza Tuner. If you aren't familiar with Boss and/or their Waza line, just know that Waza means you're going to pay more. As with the other Waza pedals, you really aren't getting a whole lot more for your money. Basically, Waza pedals give you two things: final quality control in Japan and a switch that lets you select from stock or mod. In this case, the mod is true bypass. That's it. You can turn your TU-3 to true bypass. That and they painted it black, so watch out, this pedal had an attitude...
It's almost as small as it is not-exciting. I don't know about you, but one of the important features of the Boss pedal tuners was the fact they could mute your signal. This let you tune silently, and doubled as a panic button for when you rig has a ghost and starts to make all sorts of horrible noise. But don't worry, this tuner did away with all that functionality. And it can be yours for only the exact price of the actual pedal (the one with all the features still intact). I wish I was kidding. It is rather smaller, but not any slimmer. Last time I checked, the width of the pedal had more effect on pedal board real estate. I guess someone thought this was a good idea...A Clip On Tuner
All kidding aside, this one is actually pretty solid. I've gone through the list with clip-on tuners. Some are better than others, but most are just barely passable. Boss have a pretty great track record when it come to tuners, so when they put their name on one, that carries some weight. This one comes in at less than $20, so it is still affordable and I wont cry to much when I eventually lose it.
Going Old-School
The last new tuner from Boss is the TU-30. Its a little more old school, and it gear toward more than guitarist. It come with a metronome and loads of extra features. If you want to read the full list of the features visit Boss. This one is probably the least excite of the four. However it does remind me of the days when I first learned the guitar and when I used a Korg tuner. That thing never stayed put and made tuning a bit of a hassle. I also lost probable a hundred dollars worth of then before switching to floor based models. I'm sure that the tuning and metronome feature are solid and that these would make great classroom and practice aids.Conclusion:
sooooooo boring........
I just got the new TU-3W. Now if I need to use a long guitar cable, I can easily switch in the high quality buffer. More often, I use a short cable - and would use the true bypass for clarity. That's very useful. I also love the black color (it is more discrete on stage) and the lights are brighter and better communicate the tuning to me. This is a terrific upgrade for a pro musician.
ReplyDeleteAgreed!
DeleteLove it! It´s boring as f, but someone (me) is going to google it some time, and then it kind of has to be there. Cause the internet is information like this. Thank you ;-)
ReplyDeleteI've owned both the TU-3 and TU-3W, the difference is negligible for a short run setup. I admit, I REALLY like the black case and the blue LED. I can afford it so that's my choice but that's all you're getting. The Waza version can't be much better quality-wise because the white TU-3 is already a proven workhorse. If you need a good ACCURATE floor tuner with a silent mute switch and color isn't that important, TU-3 is the way to go. Tommy Emmanuel tours with the white TU-3's, swears by them... they can't be that bad, lol.
ReplyDeletewell stated
DeleteI bought the Boss TU-3W WAZA and the black case with blue lights will look good on my pedalboard. I have a Rocktron Unity Series tuner also and wish the Boss TU-3W had a note display as large and a better strobe. The Boss is brutal and beautiful , but, the Rocktron is hands down faster and easier to read with strobe accuracy you can see and hear.
ReplyDelete