| String | Note | Frequency |
|---|---|---|
| 4 | E1 | 41.20 Hz |
| 3 | A1 | 55.00 Hz |
| 2 | D2 | 73.42 Hz |
| 1 | G2 | 98.00 Hz |
Tuning a bass with this page
Once the microphone is on, any open string will do as a starting point: pluck it with the side of a finger and let it ring. The tuner picks the nearest of the four strings by itself, so you can go through them in any order: E, A, D, G. Green within ±3 cents means the string is in tune. If you play through an amp, point the phone or laptop at the speaker; with an acoustic bass, hold it near the sound hole.
Bass notes are slow: the low E vibrates 41 times a second, so the tuner listens to a longer stretch of sound (about a sixth of a second) than it does for a guitar before it shows a reading. Let each note ring for a second rather than plucking quickly.
Low notes and small speakers
The Play button sounds the selected string. Phone and laptop speakers can’t reproduce 41 Hz well, so the tone is a filtered sawtooth wave: it carries overtones at twice and three times the note, which small speakers do play, and you still hear the pitch as E1. For a cleaner reference, use headphones.
Five strings or Drop D
The tuning menu also has 5-string (B E A D G) and Drop D (D A D G). Switching the tuning moves the targets, and the hint tells you how many semitones a string has to go before the needle takes over. For a 5-string, the 5-string bass tuner explains the low B.