| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Electronics |
| Founded | Chicago (1948) |
| Founder(s) | Richard H. Peterson |
| Headquarters | Alsip, Illinois, United States |
| Area served | Worldwide |
| Key people | Richard Peterson (Founder) Scott R. Peterson (President) Bill Hass (Engineer) Patrick J. Bovenizer (VP) |
| Products | Tuners |
| Subsidiaries | Conn Tuner |
| Website | www.petersontuners.com |
Peterson Electro-Musical Products, Inc. is a leading music-electronics manufacturer. The company was founded by Richard H. Peterson in 1948.[1] The Peterson company introduced the first commercial handheld electronic tuner for musicians, the Model 70, in 1964, and later its models of strobe tuners became popular among touring and studio musicians such as the Grateful Dead, The Who, Pink Floyd, Frank Zappa, Jimi Hendrix, and Neil Young.[1] Since its inception the company has also contributed notable inventions and innovations to the electronic organ, and its products are in use in many thousands of pipe organs, and hundreds of thousands of electronic organs, worldwide.[2]
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Founder Richard H. "Dick" Peterson (born February 26, 1925, died January 29, 2009), was born in Chicago and in his teens began developing a keen interest in radios, vacuum tube circuits, and pipe organs. He served as a radio operator for the U.S. Army near the end of World War II, and while stationed in New York City, developed a further fascination with both the sound and mechanics of pipe organs. He founded Haygren Organ Company to build electronic pipe organs with a sound that better matched that of real pipe organs, and was the first to employ the concept of using numerous independent oscillators in the organ design to produce a genuine ensemble. He also focused on the realistic attack and decay of each individual electronic note.[2]
Peterson founded Peterson Electro-Musical Products in 1948.[1] He soon licensed his inventions to the Gulbransen Piano Company of Chicago to be used in home electronic organs. In 1957, Peterson completed the world's first transistor organ for Gulbransen.[2] The company went on to consistently produce innovative products for musical tuning, electronic organs, home security, and keyboards, and later became a leader in developing and producing electronic and electro-mechanical equipment utilized in authentic pipe organs worldwide.[1]
In 1964, the Peterson company built a new 3,000-square-foot (280 m2) headquarters in Alsip, Illinois, on a plot of 2.5 acres (10,000 m2). Two additional buildings totaling 15,000 square feet (1,400 m2) were built on the company's factory "campus" between 1975 and 1977.[2] In 1985 the prominent Conn Tuner company faded, and their Strobotuner division was bought by Peterson, who continue to service their line of products.[1]
In 1991 Dick Peterson's son Scott R. Peterson was appointed as Company President, after previously serving as Design Engineer, Production Manager, and Vice President.[2]
In 1998, the Peterson Company celebrated it's 50-year anniversary by creating the "Beer Bottle Organ" prototype in the exhibit area of the American Institute of Organ Builders convention. The "BBO" used pipe organ components and beer bottles with liquid, precisely tuned with a Peterson strobe tuner, to produce a clear, flute-like musical sound when played with a keyboard or via recorded MIDI files.[2]
Peterson Electro-Musical Products, Inc. is still family owned, and continues to be a leader in its fields. The company still has an active research and development program for both tuner and pipe organ-equipment product lines.[2]
The first Peterson tuner, the Model 150, was released in 1952, after being developed for Peterson's own use in tuning organs. Along with the Model 200 following in 1959, they were the first products to carry the Peterson name.[2] These tuners used vacuum tube technology and produced a wide range of finely adjustable audio tones. The design was advanced to solid state tuner with the Model 300 in 1966.[1]
Peterson engineer, Bill Hass (born February 6, 1939, died May 3, 2008), built the very first commercially available, battery-powered handheld tuner, the Model 70, in 1964. The Model 70 was a chromatic tuner with twelve fixed pitches that emitted a reference tone. Setting the tuner to a pitch and matching the tone on an instrument was how tuning was achieved. [1]
In 1967, Peterson introduced its first strobe tuner, the Model 400. It was the first solid-state strobe tuner on the market, and was a breakthrough in that it did not require calibration and allowed musicians to select one-cent increments. The tuner was highly influential in Peterson Tuner's growing presence in the fledgling tuner industry.
The rise of popular music as a business force in the entertainment industry in the 1960s and 1970s also brought an increased demand for professionalism in performance and recording. The only commercially available tuners during this era were manufactured by Peterson and Conn, which led to their presence on most major records and live concerts during this era. The Peterson models became highly popular among leading touring and studio musicians, and were frequently used onstage by such bands as the Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead, The Who, Pink Floyd, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, Queen, Neil Young and Crazy Horse, the Bruce Springsteen Band, and many others.[1] The tuner also became very popular for precision tuning by school bands, top-level orchestras and musical instrument manufacturers.[2][1]
In 1980 Peterson introduced the Model 100 tuner, which was designed exclusively for guitars. The tuner used the strobe concept to create a rolling LED display indicating errorin pitch by speed of the rolling LEDs. The Model 100 sold successfully in the early 1980s and stayed on the market for nearly a decade.[1]
In the 1990s, Peterson made the first significant change to the spinning wheel strobe since it introduced the Model 400 in the late '60s. They introduced the "Strobe Center 5000™" (SC5000), which employed twelve digital stepper motors (one motor for each of the twelve notes in an octave) controlled by microprocessors, and allowed the strobe to change keys, temperaments, and load stretch tuning tables into a memory bank.[1] It is also the only true “polyphonic” tuner made. Widely used by school band programs for its visibility and by the instrument manufacturing sector for its ability to show harmonic content, the Strobe Center 5000 continues to be Peterson's flagship strobe tuner.
After the Strobe Center 5000, Peterson Tuners re-designed their mechanical strobe tuning line and introduced a line of AutoStrobe series tuners, which selected the note automatically and offered programmability for advanced users. Besides the Strobe Center 5000, the AutoStrobe tuners are the only true strobe tuners made anywhere today.[1] Models include:
In 2001 Peterson Tuners developed a line of Virtual Strobe™ electronic strobe tuners that utilize LCD dot-matrix displays to emulate the response of a mechanical strobe disc wheel, creating a stroboscopic effect. Peterson began using the "Strobo" name for all of its new Virtual Strobe™ line of products. According to the company, this was a response to other manufacturers incorrectly marketing non-strobe tuners under the name "Strobe". The Peterson 'strobo' tuner line guarantees 1/10th cent accuracy,[3] or higher by using patented technology.[4] The Virtual Strobe display is able to deliver a higher resolution over traditional needle and/or LED-based tuners enabling users to dial in extreme precision when tuning.[1]
Peterson Virtual Strobe™ tuners offer specialized tuning solutions for various instruments referred to by Peterson Tuners as Sweeteners. According to Peterson, "Sweetening" a tuning is using consonance and dissonance to affect the sound of a specific instrument, ultimately aiding in the creation of tension and release in music.
Peterson strobe tuners are loaded with presets that see a particular tuning as a group of notes (not just individual pitches) and, because of their high tuning resolution, can optimize the notes within these groups to be more consonant with one another and pleasing to the ear.
The term 'Sweetener' was coined by Peterson to make a clear distinction between temperaments and these 'other' exclusive sets of offsets. A temperament, by definition, implies the use of no more than 12 offsets, one for each pitch in the 12-tone chromatic scale. These offsets form a "template" octave. C0, C1, C2 through C8 for example, all have the same cent offset that has been defined for 'C'.
Peterson Sweetened presets are not temperaments because they do not necessarily pertain to a scale. They are sets of offsets designed with a particular instrument in mind. The GTR Sweetener, for example, is only meant to battle the common tuning problems inherent to a 6-string guitar. Unlike temperaments, the Sweetener offsets only have musical benefit when applied to their intended instrument.[1]
In 2001, the model "VS-1" Virtual Strobe Tuner was introduced. Peterson's intention with the Virtual Strobe line was to create tuners that are portable, handheld, and affordable to musicians and students at large. The VS-II in 2003 had an improved display, additional features, and "Sweetened Tunings". It was also the first tuner that recognized and introduced dedicated tempered tuning presets for pedal steel guitar players. The V-SAM™ model, introduced later that year, added an audio output speaker and a metronome to the feature set of the popular VS-II.[1] The VS-II was superseded by the StroboFlip in 2006.
In 2004, the Virtual Strobe tuner model was updated to a stomp box format. The StroboStomp™ was constructed to be sturdy enough to handle stage use and heavy touring. The StroboStomp2™ replaced the first model in 2007, becoming the best-selling strobe-based pedal tuner on the market.[1] Both models of the StroboStomp featured true-bypass technology that would not 'color' the tone of the connected instrument and offered a studio-grade, on-board DI (direct injection box). The StroboStomp was discontinued in 2007. The StroboStomp2 was discontinued in 2009 and replaced by the VSS-C Stomp Classic™. The StroboStomp was the first ever true-bypass tuner and the first strobe tuning pedal tuner to be available commercially.
In 2006, the VS-II was replaced with the StroboFlip, a smaller version that could be used by musicians without a pedal board. It featured an innovative "Pitch Holder™" that connected to the tuner with a tripod-like mount, allowing it to clamp onto music or mic stands. It is also the first tuner to specify the correct interval tunings for resophonic guitar and orchestral strings.[1]
In 2007, the StroboRack was introduced and featured a large 7" tuning display that made it easily visible from a variety of angles and environments.[1] The StroboRack is the world's first single-space rack-mount strobe tuner.
In late 2005, Peterson Tuners announced the release of the StroboSoft, a software based strobe tuner that can be used on Mac or PC to tune on your computer. StroboSoft provides the same tuning accuracy as the hardware products and can be used as a stand-alone tuner or as a VST/AU (StroboSoft™ 2.0) plug-in. The software package contains utilities for tuning and sound analysis including a spectrum analyzer, oscilloscope, and linear pitch graph.[5]
In 2010, the Stomp Classic replaced the prior StroboStomp2 product and added an improved DI, a larger display and multi-octave programmability. The stomp box design was also redesigned and modeled after the 1970s Conn ST-11 Strobotuner. It is capable of being connected to a computer via USB and accepts altered tunings and Sweeteners previously created on a special software editor made especially for the tuner.
The StroboClip, introduced in 2010, is the world's first strobe tuner in a clip-on form. It contains a large preset list of Sweetened Tunings for a variety of acoustic instruments but can be used for electric guitar and bass players during on-stage performance. The StroboClip became the first hardware tuner to feature the correct interval tuning for not just guitars and basses, but also for such diverse instruments as bagpipes, oud, banjo, sitar and Arabic maqamat (Eastern temperaments).
Peterson Tuners released a Virtual Strobe™ tuning application in 2009 as a professional-grade tuning app for Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch. The application leverages the Virtual Strobe display and provides chromatic tuning with Peterson's renowned standard tuning resolution of 0.1 cent. In 2010, Peterson released a native iPad® version that offers unique functions on the iPad platform that includes VGA output support for classroom usage and manual note selection. An adaptor cable designed specifically for use with the Apple devices was also introduced to support the app and offer users an entry-level package solution.
The following is a short list of notable musicians who frequently use Peterson Tuners in their gear setup: