CA50 Chromatic Tuner Review

Pocket sized, fairly basic

This item is approximately 4" x 2.5" x 3/4" - small enough to put in your pocket and inexpensive enough not to worry about losing it. It's powered by a pair of triple As and has a thin kickstand on the back. The four buttons are small, occupying only 2" of vertical space so you might have to use your thumbnail to operate them. There is nothing fancy to this unit at all: power button,… read more half-step up and down buttons, and sound button to generate a tone. The tone range is only thirteen notes (middle C to C) and indications on screen for minor and major thirds. It can be calibrated (410- to 480) by turning it on and pressing the up/down buttons. There is no backlight, which is a major failing for a performing musician. If you're fumbling around in low light yhou have to make sure not to touch the up / down buttons unless the sound button is pressed first, or you will accidentally change the calibration. This should have required the holding down of one button while pressing the up / down buttons, but no one at Korg happened to think of it. Frankly, I use a nicely illuminated Korg PB-CS "Pitchback" tuner pedal for my serious stuff. I bought the CA-50 to produce tones for tuning my congas. It has a built-in mic and 1/4" pass-through jacks, but with the thin, needle-like display and ultra light weight I can't see it being on a pedalboard. Having a backlight would have rated this unit another star. Having it produce several octaves instead of just one would not have driven up the price at all, so I wish they had included that feature. Because of the limited range, when tuning my congas I have to listen to the tone, then sing then note and transpose to the right octave (the overtones of a conga can be distracting when a tuner is emitting a high note). The point to this tuner is that it is dirt cheap and can fit into any case.

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