Korg Sledgehammer Pro review

Stand-out clip-on tuners

  • £36
  • €39
  • $30
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The Pro's display is on a par with a Peterson Virtual Strobe

MusicRadar Verdict

Not the cheapest, but in terms of accuracy, the Pro is the way to go.

Pros

  • +

    Extremely fast and accurate. Sledgehammer Pro is the best clip-on we've tried. Lightweight. Easy to read.

Cons

  • -

    Price. The regular Sledgehammer is a little less accurate.

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The Pro's display is on a par with a Peterson Virtual Strobe
The Pro's display is on a par with a Peterson Virtual Strobe

Korg Sledgehammer Pro

These new lightweight Sledgehammer tuners from Korg share a wide- jawed plastic clip and fully rotating tubular head.

The Sledgehammer has a recessed flat screen with thumbwheel controls at each end. The left wheel, moved up, turns the power on; turned down, you select chromatic, guitar or bass modes.

"Accuracy and quick response here are extremely good"

The right wheel, moved up, calibrates the tuning reference from 436-445Hz; moved down, you enter the flat (down five semitones) or capo (up seven semitones) modes.

On its rounded '3D' display, the all-black Pro has a choice of read-outs (regular, strobe and half strobe) but does away with the specific guitar and bass modes. It has improved accuracy(+/-0.1asopposedto +/- 1 cent) and increases battery life from eight to 14 hours.

In Use

Accuracy and quick response here are extremely good. The standard Sledgehammer's more basic display is better for students; yet it's a little slower and seems very slightly less accurate.

The Pro, however, especially in strobe mode, is on a par with a Peterson Virtual Strobe - we achieved excellent results with both a troublesome nylon string and gigging a bass.

Accurate and lightweight they may be, but both are on the steeper side, price-wise, of the clip-on tuner market.

The Pro, however, is the most accurate tuner of its type we've yet encountered, and the most visible, in terms of that '3D' display.

Dave Burrluck
Dave Burrluck

Dave Burrluck is one of the world’s most experienced guitar journalists, who started writing back in the '80s for International Musician and Recording World, co-founded The Guitar Magazine and has been the Gear Reviews Editor of Guitarist magazine for the past two decades. Along the way, Dave has been the sole author of The PRS Guitar Book and The Player's Guide to Guitar Maintenance as well as contributing to numerous other books on the electric guitar. Dave is an active gigging and recording musician and still finds time to make, repair and mod guitars, not least for Guitarist’s The Mod Squad.