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Rating: - Outstanding!
I picked up two of these, one for personal use and one for a friend's birthday present. I've yet to have a problem using mine, and haven't heard anything negative from my friend about his.

This replaced my old quartz tuner that I fought with when trying to tune my guitar. With the old tuner you had to have a room that was perfectly quiet, the Intellitouch PT1 tunes perfectly in a noisy room. The backlight display helps in low light situations, and it's compact and clip on design makes it easy to carry around and just clip it on. It also folds back out of the way so you can leave it clipped on for easy retuning between songs.

I highly recommend this product.

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Rating: - Solved a boat-load of problems...
I've owned/used this tuner for a while now and am pretty satisfied with it's performance. I bought it to replace my aging Seiko tuner which I ran in my audio chain after the guitar and before my chorus pedal. The PT1 solved a lot of problems.

Seiko: One more patch cord to carry/hookup/breakdown. Outboard tuner required me to bend over to turn on and off during Worship Service. Hard to see down there on the floor in low light. Could not mute tuner for in-service tuning. Very hard to tune with other instruments "wailing away" since the guitar picked up vibrations. Had to use patch cord to get best tuning even when playing unplugged.

The PT1 is easy to see, even in the dark. I can turn my pre-amp down and re-tune during the service if needed. It does not pickup all the other instruments on stage. Easy to setup, just clip on and turn on. Auto-shut off after a few minutes. Nice padded hard shell carry case.

I had a problem with the on/off button on the first one I bought right out of the box. I sent it back to the manufacturer and they sent me a brand new one very quickly. It's worked flawlessly.

I've deducted 1 star for the fact that the tuner sometimes struggles with the low "E" string. Not a problem on initial tune-up, but can cause some tense moments during in-service drop D tuning forays!

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Rating: - The Intellitouch is DEAD! Long live the Intelli IMT-500!
I'm afraid the Intellitouch has lost all its stars!

My original review was titled "DEFINITELY YES...or maybe DEFINITELY NOT (NOT--see Added in edit 2)". It appears below. It started out as a (properly!) positive review when there was no real alternative clip-on tuner, but the Intelli IMT-500 changed all that. The edits described a gradual but dramatic shift from the Intellitouch to the Intelli. It's no longer gradual.

I'm blessed with an abundance of jams where I live. I attend about 2 each week from among the 5 that interest me. Given the cost of the Intellitouch, one might expect people to keep using them rather than abandon them. However, that's not what's happening. The change has occurred so quickly that it would be impossible for someone unfamiliar with the Intellitouch to tell that it ever dominated the market. I decided to document the switchover. See Customer Images.

Also, I was wrong below when I said that the Intellitouch was easier to stuff into a pocket. I've discovered that if the Intelli is folded just right, it fits quite comfortably into a small cellphone/camera case that is even easier to deal with than the Intellitouch's case.

Bottom line: Avoid the Intellitouch. Get an Intelli.

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DEFINITELY YES...or maybe DEFINITELY NOT (NOT--see Added in edit 2)

There's no middle ground with either model of the Intellitouch tuner. You'll either love it or hate it.

The main reason why people hate them is because there are so many situations where they do not work well. In particular, they have trouble with the bass notes of dreadnought sized guitars. The more overtones the instrument produces, the worse the Intellitouch behaves. If you've no other source of amusement, find someone trying to use an Intellitouch to tune the bass string of a Martin rosewood dreadnought.

Intellitouch users come up with ingenious workarounds for when the unit misbehaves. The most popular are
* to place the tuner in a different position on the instrument. Sometimes moving it just a little bit on the headstock will do the trick.
* to pluck the note very gently with the fingertip rather than a pick. This minimizes the effects of overtones and often cures the problem.
* to tune to an octave or harmonic.
* to not worry about the letter in the LCD display. (It will often display a B when tuning to low E.)
* to keep plugging away until the tuner registers properly. However, once the tuner has stopped registering, I find that plucking a string repeatedly--hard or soft--doesn't help. I quiet all the strings and pause to let the tuner "reset".
* to give up, that is, to tune the first 5 strings with the Intellitouch and tune the 6-th string in the relative way by adjusting the tuning peg until the note at the fifth fret of the 6-th string sounds the same as the open 5-th string.

This is enough to make you wonder why anyone would own one. There's a one word answer: CONVENIENCE!

* If you play in a group, you'll quickly appreciate how a clip-on tuner let's you tune even when others are playing.
* If you play outside of your home or apartment, you'll quickly appreciate how easy it is to carry with no wires to tangle.
* You might not realize how often you tune in low-light situations until you see how often the Intellitouch's backlight proves useful.

I used to be an Intellitouch basher because of the situations where it wouldn't work well. However, the more I found myself moving around at festivals and jams, the more I grew to appreciate the Intellitouch's convenience and backlight. Now that I've years of experience with it, I have to admit that it's my tuner of choice for outside the house. Now, you can be amused at *my* rationalizations of why its problems aren't really problems.

The other complaint some people have with the Intellitouch is its scale. It indicates whether a string is tuned by displaying up to 3 angle brackets on either side of the name of the note. When the string is tuned accurately, the Intellitouch displays 3 brackets on each side of the letter denoting the note being played. The brackets disappear from the left of the letter as the string goes sharp and from the right of the letter as the string goes flat. The complaint is that the scale is supposed not to be sensitive enough to do its job--that there's too much wiggle room within what the Intellitouch tuner calls "tuned". I don't see it, or rather I don't hear it. I don't have problems with its accuracy.

Some comments:

Any tuner with an input jack (typically used with a cable to tune electric guitars) can be turned into a clip on tuner by adding a clip-on tuner pickup such as a Signalflex SF30. That's what I do at home with my Korg and Seiko tuners in preference to my Intellitouch.

After letting Intellitouch own the clip-on tuner market for years, other companies such as Korg and Seiko have released their own clip-ons, but they haven't caught on, yet. I'm not sure why except, perhaps, that those who have an Intellitouch aren't eager to spend the money on another expensive tuner while those who don't already own a clip-on tuner are impressed by the sheer numbers of Intellitouches around.

Finally, regardless of what tuner you use, always tune up, never down. That is, if when the note is overshot so that the string becomes sharp, drop the tension and tune up once again until the target is achieved. When a string is loosened it sometimes continues to slip a bit until the tension equalized between the pin, saddle, nut, and tuning peg. This is less an issue when tightening a string.

Bottom line:

The Intellitouch is extremely convenient if you play with others or outside the home. Those who already own tuners with input jacks should consider getting a tuner pick up such as the Signalflex SF30.

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Added in edit:

I'm a sucker for new gadgets. I recently got an Intelli IMT-500, which, unfortunately, Amazon does not yet stock (as of mid-September 2006). The Intelli beats the Intellitouch (unfortunate similarity of names, that) in every way but one. The Intelli is more sensitive. The Intelli's scale is easier to read. The Intelli's backlight is brighter.

The *only* problem the Intelli has is that it folds up into a cube that is awkward to fit in a pocket. I'd even be a bit nervous having it in a gig bag's pouch for fear of what might happen to the guitar's top if the bag/cube got whacked just the right (that is, wrong) way.

I now almost always use the Intelli, with the Intellitouch reserved for situations like jams or festivals where I'll find myself walking around and wanting a tuner in my pocket.

I am also noticing a gradual but dramatic shift. Those who've already invested their money are sticking with their Itellitouches for the moment, but all the new tuners I see showing up at jams are Intellis.

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Added in edit 2:

The more experience I gain with the Intelli, the less I use the Intellitouch. The Intelli is *much* more responsive and its meter is *much* easier to use. I knew I was accepting compromises with the Intellitouch, but until the Intelli came along I didn' appreciate how many. The ONLY advantage the Intellitouch has is that it's easier to fit into a pocket, but the Intellitouch is large, so that works only if you'll be standing most of the time.

Were there no Intelli, I'd stand by my original Intellitouch review. But there is, so I can't. Skip the Intellitouch, get an Intelli. Now, if only Amazon would carry it. No big deal, though, since they are readily available on line and are making big inroads into music stores.

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Rating: - ***LIFETIME WARRANTY AS OF 2006***
The company is now offering a lifetime warranty on any tuner purchased in 2006. If you have an older model you can send $25 and they will replace it with a lifetime warranty 2006 version. Regarding the comment of the person who bought it and couldn't get it to tune while bowing, the manufacturer has a different product (CenterPitch Universal) for bowed or wind instruments. Best tuner I've bought ever!!!!

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Rating: - My favorite tuner for many reasons!
I have owned many electronic tuners over the years. My favorite was the little square Sabine tuner until I found the intellitouch tuners. Here are my reasons.

1. Diplay is easy to read without your glasses and it is lit with red light so you can see it easily at night--even if you are almost blind without your glasses. :)

2. You can leave them clipped to your instrument while you are jamming so that you do not accidently leave them lying around somewhere and lose them at others' campsites.

3. You do not have to be embarrassed if you accidently pick up someone else's tuner at a jam session. Black sharpie warnings will not show up on the black tuner. That was what I hated about the old Sabine wood tuners. Folks would write--"this tuner does not belong to Mary Cox" in black sharpie on the wood. :)

4. It is fairly inexpensive and the company backs them well. It is quick and cheap to have a broken one fixed.

5. Some folks do not like these tuners (I'm not sure why)and will send you theirs because they buy something else. At least one nice person sent me hers when I lost one of mine. It works great and I'm still using it. I left my other one sitting on a bench in the park and of course it was gone when I went back. :)

6.We do not care about tuner fashion. We do not care about cool or uncool--we just want tuners we can read and not lose. :)

My husband and I have three or four of these kicking around the house all the time--and we love them. Keeps us in tune and we lose less of these than any other brand.:)

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