“Tunes Tighter So You Sound Better.”
I’m impressed with the Snark tuners. I own the Blue SN-1 for guitars and the Red SN-2 with extended range and a built in mic for all instruments. Better than I thought they’d be. Least important is the finish, but the finish is beautiful. Much better than any of the company pictures I’ve seen on websites. The blue and red colors are an intense rare metallic color. The Snark only weighs about 1.5 ounces with a very expertly made clamp with rubber gripping jaws. The lower jaw hinges allowing it to fit any contour. I have an Ovation with the angled head stock. The Snark clips right on and stays there. And with a ball socket on each end of the curved mounting post that connects the clamp to the face we’re talking 360 degress maneuvering making the Snark perfectly adjustable for most any situation.
Comes complete with a CR2032 Lithium 3 volt battery. This is the same kind that many computers use for the clock battery. They never seem to wear out or leak. That’s been my experience. Battery is held in a simple pull out draw behind tuner face.
It’s best to tune-up on stage just before you play because the temperature on stage will be a little different than other places in the building. A clip on tuner is fast, other noises won’t interupt the tuning because you are using a direct contact vibration sensor, and you can slip the Snark in your pocket as soon as you’re done, how convenient. People will even ask you where they can get one because they are so impressive being so small, convenient, and quick to use. Tuning is easy. To go from one note to the next is very fast, almost instant and the Snark face lights up like a neon sign. Very easy to read and it perches on the guitar head stock like a little Canary. The Red SN-2 All Instrument Tuner has extended range and a built in microphone option you can turn on when needed. Perhaps if an instrument has no place to clip onto. Will tune guitars, bass guitars, bass violins, Bb trumpets, saxophones, flutes, and most any instrument. We have an electric Yamaha piano. The Snark SN-2 will clip onto the front wood piece and tune all the keys except the 7 lowest notes, 4 naturals and 3 flats. Both Snark models have a transpose feature. This allows a guitar player to tune with a capo on frets 1 through 4. The tuner will read the regular open string notes, E, A, D, G, B E. This is important because many capos depress the strings all the way down to the fret board. This usually leaves the notes sharp and out of tune. The human fingers usually don’t depress strings all the way down to the fret board. So the transpose feature should be used to tune before playing with a capo for the perfect tune. How accurate is the Snark? Answer, it seems to be exact. The Snark company says tight. With my older tuner I could turn my guitar tuning keys more than just a little and the tuner wouldn’t even notice. If I turn my guitar tuning keys just a very little bit using Snark tuner it notices the change. That’s the kind of tuner I wanted. To get a perfect or near perfect tune sometimes I could do better with my own ears. The human ear can be the best tuning, but it takes longer and with other sounds all around a good clip on tuner works better most the time.
So how accurate is the Snark? I used an E tuning fork to find out. I put the E tuning fork ball down on the bridge of my guitar with the Snark at the other end clipped onto the head stock. The Snark instantly showed a perfect E note. I thought, that’s what I’ve been looking for. So the Snark works just right for me. It looks great, it’s handy, and works fast and accurate. It has the chromatic scale (shows all notes and sharps). The red, All Instrument SN-2 has the extended range for most any instrument and with the built-in mic switch option you can choose to use either Mic or Vibration. Also both models have the built-in mentronome that keeps pace with a vivid red flashing heart which is kind of funny, cool, and so easy to see.
FEATURES:
1. Full Color Display
2. Display rotates 360 degrees for easy viewing
3. “Stay Put Clip”
4. Tap Tempo Metronome
5. Transpose Feature
6. Pitch Calibration (415-466Hz)
7. High Sensitivity Vibration Sensor
8. Features extended frequency range for all intruments
9. Choose internal mic or vibration sensor
10. The Snark Tuner occasionally runs a self test making sure
all functions are go.

After trying several clip-on tuners for my guitars, banjos, and mandolins, this is definitely the best I’ve ever used. It works very well on all three instruments. It’s accurate, the lighted display is very visible with bright colors for flat, sharp, and right-on. The head of the display swivels easily in any direction for easy viewing. It also allows tuning by both vibration or sound. The red color of the tuner’s exterior makes it easy to find in my gig bag but is not obnoxiously bright when placed on the headstock. It’s so good I bought two. Delivery came in about two or three days by standard shipping.

We’ve been only using it for two days, and so far so good. I cannot say anything about durability for now, but I’ll update this review if it breaks.

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One of my kids has been borrowing my trusty old BOSS TU-12 chromatic tuner forever for her violin, and I finally bought this for her.

There are many clip-on tuners, but I liked the following about this tuner:

1. LCD mimicing an analog needle so you know how much you’re off (as opposed to just flat or sharp).

2. You can switch between vibration sensor and an internal mic. Most of the time you want to use vibration sensor anyway, but a mic sometimes comes in handy.

3. Can set different pitch than A=440.

4. Not expensive (was less than […]$ including shipping).

Upon delivery I tried it on my guitars (both acoustic and electric) using vibration sensor before giving it to my kid, and was impressed.

It is quick to track the note even for low E. It’s not picky about where on the peghead it is clipped on. No stress whatsoever, indeed it’s just as quick and smooth as my BOSS. LCD is bright and clear, and needle-ish display works as expected.

It worked very well on violin too. And I saw kids singing to internal mic to check the pitch of their voices just for fun.

And a note about the looks. From the picture I expected it to be ugly, but actually it was not that bad. It’s tiny and doesn’t look like a Fisher-Price product.

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First update, Nov 24 2010: I’ve tried it on an electric bass (4 string), and it worked equally well. Still 5 stars.
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Second update, Oct 20 2011: It’s still working happily for my daughter, and I bought a second unit for myself. Fantastic product.