V-AMP 2
6. TUNER
Press the TUNER button to activate the built-in tuner.
6.1 Tuning your guitar
The chromatic tuner automatically recognizes the frequencies of all the standard guitar notes. For the A-string this means a frequency of 220 Hz. When you plug your guitar into the V-AMP 2 and play an open string, the tuner will recognize and display the note. Since the tuner uses an auto-chromatic scale, it can also recognize semi-tones, which are shown with a “b” in the display.
It may happen, however, that a note is displayed as “A” but is actually slightly out of tune. This is shown by at least one of the four LEDs at the foot of the display lighting up. In certain cases even two of the LEDs may light up, which indicates that the pitch of the note played lies between the pitches represented by the two LEDs. When the circular tuner LED in the middle lights up, this means the note played is in tune.
6.2 Setting reference pitch “A”
To give you maximum freedom for tuning your guitar, you can change the preset reference pitch “A”. For the sake of clarity, let’s look at this in more detail.
The so-called concert pitch “A” has been raised steadily over time. For example, the tuning forks used by Bach, Händel or Mozart were 415, 420 or 421 Hz (oscillations per second). Today’s orchestras tune to “A” at 444 Hz, and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra lead the field with their own concert pitch “A” at 447 Hz.
The reference “A” on your V-AMP 2 has been factory-programmed at 440 Hz. If you are going to play with a big orchestra tuning their instruments to a reference pitch of 444 Hz, you will need a function that allows you to change your reference pitch. To activate this function, switch on the tuner by pressing the TUNER button and switch to EDIT mode by pressing the two arrow keys simultaneously. The display will show “40”, which means 440 Hz. Use the arrow keys to raise or lower the reference pitch by up to 15 Hz. The display always shows the last two digits as the first digit is always 4. For example, if you start with a reference pitch of 440 Hz and press the right-hand arrow three times, the display will read 43, i.e. 443 Hz. To quit EDIT mode, press either the TUNER or the TAP button. Any changes will be stored automatically. The tones for the other strings on your guitar will automatically be adjusted to the new reference pitch.
