I’ve run sound at a wide variety of live shows, and one of the 2 things that bothers me the most about inexperienced bands is that they frequently have slightly out-of-tune guitars (the other is that they all crank their amps up to 11, but that’s an issue for another day). One reason for this is that it’s a bitch to tune a guitar in a noisy room.

Thankfully, that is no longer an excuse! With the Stimmmoped, you can use light instead of sound to check your tuning. Utilizing the stroboscopic effect, with 2 lights flashing out of sync in specific patterns, the tuner makes the string you pluck appear to be completely still – but only if it’s perfectly tuned. Otherwise, you will see movement and/or the light dancing along the string.

You can build the Stimmmoped yourself, with a little bit of basic electronics knowledge. Fortunately, there are several pre-made options for the same thing – my favorite is the Planet Waves SOS Tuner, in a nifty little guitar pick shape.