Great for tuning a piano
Bought this item to tune a fine, 75 year-old piano that was last tuned 40 years ago; with just a piano lever bought for $15, a single rubber mute, and this Korg tuner, I had all I needed. (And, watched a few videos on the web showing how to use the mutes...)
My concern before buying this was two-fold: could it really "hear" the pitches well, i.e. would it be confused by harmonics, and did it really display the sensitivity I needed to tune the piano so precisely that with my good ear for pitch, I wouldn't be disturbed by it? The answer on both counts is definitely, yes.
Following advice on videos & websites, I first tuned the entire middle octave of the piano just using the Korg, then tuned all other notes using a combination of watching the dial of the Korg, and listening to the current note - comparing to the note I had just tuned an octave away. I was genuinely surprised to find the Korg's precision was better than my ear... (I seem to have a tendency to want to tune everything just a wee bit sharp, according to the Korg. And I know from my singing, that everyone else in a choir always sounds slightly flat to me... this confirmed it for me! ouch! I'm not perfect!)
The Korg reads the pitch and decides (for example) if it's a C or a D-flat, then shows you with its dial-simulated LCD display how far off from its presumed pitch it really is, so that when the needle points "up" you're perfectly in pitch. In addition, you can set the entire Korg's scale up or down, so you're not limited to tuning to A-440 (e.g. you can tune it to A-441 etc. if you prefer.) However, it cannot do non-well-tempered scales; for that, you need a higher model of Korg device.
In the highest and lowest half-octaves of the piano, the Korg began to fail to properly read the note and was useless for tuning; presumably, the harmonics confused it. Not a problem, and it's so hard for the human ear to properly discern very low pitches, I wasn't surprised that the Korg couldn't do it well either.
Regarding the sensitivity of the device, all I can give are a few examples and let you infer for yourself whether it is sensitive enough. First, the Korg device gave me more sensitivity than the piano hammer / lever. That is, with the lever in place adjusting a single note, the most minimal adjustment by the hammer would produce a noticeable difference on the Korg display. That means, that simply applying pressure to the tuning hammer, which makes the tiniest shift of the gear in the piano, would be "read" by the Korg. This also happens to be the absolute minimum that I could detect a pitch change by ear. In other words, the Korg is plenty sensitive. The "resolution" of the Korg barely seems better than my ears -- but my ears are pretty good.
Looking at sensitivity another way: the most sensitive tuning you can do with a piano, when you tune two strings at the same pitch, is to listen to the "beats" (+ and - wave interference of the two pitches.) As you bring the second string into tune with the first, the beats get slower & slower until they finally disappear. Violinists may know that when you play two notes a perfect major third apart, you can sometimes "feel" a third note that results from their interference pattern; it's an incredibly sensitive phenomenon. Well, the Korg wasn't intended to capture the pitch of two notes that are slightly off from each other, but the needle did shift up as I tuned the flat note up, and could distinguish when the two notes were exactly right and the beats disappeared. That, is sensitive indeed, believe me.
As a singer, I'm quite good at hitting notes, e.g. I've got the ability to sing next to someone else... e.g. a quarter tone above them or below them (try it -- most people can't do it) but the Korg is so sensitive, that I defy anyone to sing a note so precisely that the needle rests precisely in the center... that's really a description of how sensitive it is, not how off-pitch a singer I can be! Believe me, this device is quite sensitive.
Various other things:
There is a groove embossed in back into which you can insert an old credit card that will make it stand up -- useful, but if it collapses and the card falls inside the piano...
The model I bought in 2008 was made in Vietnam. That was a first for me, and I'm glad to see it.
More expensive Korg models will let you adopt different tunings other than well-tempered. But would I ever re-tune a piano non-temperered? Highly doubtful, and if I ever really need to, then I'll buy the more expensive Korg.
The Korg can also play a tone, a synethesized single-pitch that sounds like a sine wave, on any note. Useful for tuning a violin etc., and the pitch is more reliable than a tuning fork (beware of cheap tuning forks.)
This Korg model doesn't act as a metronome; others do. I haven't used a metronome since I was a kid learning to keep a consistent beat, and I don't believe any musician should ever use a metronome... unless if they need to play at a specific pace for a commercial recording or something that needs precise timing. (Metronomes stifle proper musicality.) Think carefully, and I seriously doubt you'll ever want a portable metronome in a Korg device like this. So I believe for 97% of shoppers, this is the item for them, as it was for me.
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