Baritone guitar tuner: B E A D F# B, free, with your mic

This is a free online tuner for baritone guitar, already set to B standard: B E A D F# B, a fourth below a regular guitar. Press Start, play one string on its own, let the note settle, then aim for 0 cents. The tuner widens its analysis window on this preset, because the low B is a slow wave that needs a longer look. No account, no download. It sits alongside the rest of our free guitar tools.

What a baritone guitar is

A baritone guitar is a six string guitar designed to sound lower than a classical, acoustic or electric guitar in standard tuning. Its neck is longer, with a scale of about 27 to 30 inches against 24.75 to 25.5 for a typical electric, and its strings are heavier, which keeps a usable tension despite the low tuning.

It is not a bass. It has six strings, it is played in chords like a guitar, and its lowest string, B at 61.74 Hz, is still a fifth above the low E of a four string bass, at 41.20 Hz. It sits between the two.

The baritone took hold from the late 1950s, made popular by Danelectro. It filled the space between guitar and bass in surf, country and film music. Its voice is low, clear, and surprisingly easy to hear in a mix. Sounds to know it by: Duane Eddy for the original twang, Ben Howard for open tunings and ringing strings, James Hetfield for heavy baritone riffs, Emma Ruth Rundle for dark ambient drones.

How to tune a baritone guitar to B standard

Every string sits five half steps, a perfect fourth, below standard tuning. The chord shapes stay identical, but an E played with the usual fingering sounds B.

Scale length, strings and build

• Scale length: 27 to 30 inches, about 686 to 762 mm. Longer means more tension and a clearer low end.
• Strings: often around .013-.068, for stability and sustain.
• Tuning: from B up to C, depending on the style and the range you want.
• Body and neck: reinforced for the tension, sometimes semi-hollow for more resonance.

The long scale is what makes B tuning comfortable on a baritone: the same low notes on a regular guitar need far heavier strings to hold their pitch. The string gauge chart for drop and low tunings puts numbers on that.

Popular baritone tunings

B standard keeps the logic of a guitar, a fourth lower. The others trade that for weight or for open ringing chords. Gauges are starting points, to adjust to your scale length and your attack: the shorter the scale, the heavier the set.

Drop B and Open C have their own presets in the menu, and their own pages: the Drop B tuner and the Open C tuner. Drop A, Open A and Open B do not, and you can still get there from the baritone preset: read the large note name and the cents. Each of their strings is either a string of the preset or a whole step or more from all of them, so near the target the tuner reads the plain note. The exception is the fourth string of Open A (C#) and Open B (D#), a half step from the preset's D: the tuner would measure it against that D. Tune it at the first fret instead, to D in Open A and E in Open B.

Which one first? B standard if you want to keep your guitar reference points. Drop A if the goal is low riffs, since the bottom string becomes more direct for power chords. Open B or Open C for washes of sound, where the open strings carry the harmony on their own.

Acoustic baritone guitars

The baritone exists as an acoustic too, on the same principle: a longer scale, heavier strings, and most often B tuning, B E A D F# B. The sound is full and warm, with a low end that carries without an amp. It is a favorite for accompanying a low voice, for fingerstyle, and for slow songs where every open string needs to ring.

Two things to check before choosing one: the strings, since you need a set made for acoustic baritone and a standard acoustic set would be far too slack, and the case, because the instrument is longer than a regular acoustic.