A Cool Acoustic Tuning Trick

Anybody who has tried to tune an acoustic guitar during a live show knows that its pretty much impossible. All the sounds onstage combined with the boomy sub woofers get picked up by the sensitive pickups in the guitar and overpower the sounds of the strings.

I recently met Ryan Grant (Guitar/Bass Tech for Our Lady Peace), and the first thing I noticed when I walked up to his workstation was his Peterson tuner with a sweet mod. He took an old pickup out of an electric guitar and soldered a 1/4" connector to it. It sounds simple, but it works wonders. The magnetic pickups don't pick up stage sound at all, just the vibrations of the strings of the guitar. Just hold the acoustic up to the pickup, hit a note and tune it to perfection!