Support

Steel Tuner for iOS

My chromatic tuner says 0¢ and Steel Tuner doesn't. Which is wrong?

Neither. A chromatic tuner aims every string at equal temperament, where a major third sits about 13.7¢ sharp of a pure one. Steel Tuner aims at the interval the string is actually voicing in the chord your pedals are making. Tuned to equal temperament that third beats roughly four and a half times a second against the root; tuned pure, the beating stops. That difference is the reason the app exists, and it is what your ear is reacting to when a chord sounds restless.

Why does the app say strings 1, 4 and 7 cannot be solved?

Because on an E9 neck they genuinely cannot. Those strings are asked to be different intervals in different chords, and the two targets sit a syntonic comma apart — about 21.5¢ — pulling in opposite directions from the same open string. Buddy Emmons' own published chart tunes the two F♯ strings +4¢ and −15¢ for exactly this reason. Steel Tuner tells you which strings are stuck rather than hiding it behind a single number, shows what each compromise costs in beats per second, and prints the stop-screw adjustment for the seven strings that are solvable.

What is a copedent, and why do I need to set one up?

Your copedent is what each pedal and knee lever does to each string. No two guitars are identical, and four charts from one forum thread will disagree three different ways. Steel Tuner ships with reference copedents you can start from, and every string, pedal, lever and half stop is editable — including mid-tune, from the tuner screen, with the bar still in your hand.

Can I share my setup with someone else?

Yes. A copedent exports as a single file that is readable as a chart and loadable as data, so you can mail or message it to another player and they can open it straight into the app. It is plain text on purpose, so a mail gateway that mangles attachments leaves it alone.

The tuner isn't hearing anything

• Check Settings › Privacy & Security › Microphone and make sure Steel Tuner is allowed.
• If another app is using the microphone, iOS may hand it over only when that app releases it. The app tells you when the system has paused the mic and picks it back up on its own.
• Low strings need a moment. The app deliberately trades latency for accuracy down there rather than guessing at an octave.

Which tunings are supported?

E9, C6, the U-12 universal neck, and three lap steel tunings, with pedals, knee levers and half stops throughout. Cabinet drop is handled as a property of your guitar, kept separate from temperament, so you are never chasing two variables at once.

Reporting something that looks wrong

If a target looks wrong against a chart you trust, that is worth an email. Say which neck and copedent you were on, which pedals or levers were down, the string, and what the app showed against what you expected. Every real bug found so far came from somebody playing an instrument, not from a test.