ChickenboneJohn's video: Tuning your Cigar Box Guitar to GDG or why a headstock tuner is your best friend your worst enemy

Quite often my customers contact me to tell me they have broken strings whilst trying to tune their cigar box guitar. My observation is that the main culprit is the humble headstock tuner. It is cheap, handy and super accurate, but the main drawback, especially for beginners is that it can't tell you what octave you should be aiming for. People just watch the little screen and keep cranking the machineheads without listening to the instrument or feeling how tight the strings are getting, then SNAP!!! the string breaks. The old fashioned pitch pipe or tuning fork gives you an audible reference note to tune to, requires a little bit of application to get the hang of it, but there's far less risk of breaking strings. In this chat, I show a few ways of tuning your guitar. I had hoped that a more expensive headstock tuner with a Hz (Hertz) readout might help identify the low G and high G notes, but I had little luck with it, and indeed it couldn't actually properly identify the middle string, the D, as it indicated it at a full octave below its true value. I've not had the opportunity to try more sophisticated tuner such as a strobe tuner, and I'm not willing to buy another supposedly more capable headstock tuner following the lacklustre performance of the Snark Super Tight HZ. So, my conclusion is by all means use a headstock tuner or tuner pedal, but try and learn to listen to your notes and develop a feeling for how tight the strings should be in order to "get you in the right ball park" before doing your final tuning. https://www.chickenbonejohn.com/