The Tuning Fork: Roll Your Own Tunings

The tuning presets in the TU101 Strobe Tuner are stored as plain JSON, a few lines of text listing the target notes string by string. If the tuning you need isn’t in the list, you can write it yourself.

A working example: Josh Homme’s chorused tuning

Josh Homme has been detuning guitars since the Kyuss days, when he took them down to C and B. By his own account, he arrived there as a kid in the desert, and though he’s acknowledged that Black Sabbath may have been doing it already, he hadn’t heard those records yet.¹ In a recent conversation with Rick Beato, he demonstrated a tuning he uses in Queens of the Stone Age alongside C and D standard, the one he says is behind why players can never quite figure out his songs.²

From low to high, it runs G G D G D D. The low E comes up a minor third to G, and the A drops a whole step to meet it. On top, the B comes up a minor third to D, and the high E drops a whole step to meet it. The D and G strings stay put. That gives you two unison pairs framing a drone of roots and fifths, with no third anywhere.

Then comes the important part. Homme doesn’t leave the pairs dead in tune. He pulls them slightly apart, “just out a little bit,” so they beat against each other and the guitar starts “gently chorusing” without a pedal in sight. Homme hears it as pagan, and it’s the sound behind material he calls his “gypsy marches.” He’s also quick to say he didn’t invent it, only found it. The same idea runs through the Stones’ “Happy,” which came up in the same conversation: guitars slightly out of tune with each other that make for a bigger sound on record.

In the interview, Beato notes that detuning the top two and low two strings is what “makes it sound massive.”² That’s the part worth experimenting with. In this preset, the low E and B strings are set 10 cents sharp of their partners, so each pair beats gently right out of the box. Homme doesn’t give a number, so treat 10 cents as a starting point and adjust by ear: a few cents wider for a deeper wobble, narrower for a subtler shimmer. If you’d rather not have either string sit on pitch, split the difference, with one string a few cents sharp and its partner a few cents flat.

This is exactly the kind of tuning a factory preset list will never include, and exactly the kind you can build in a few minutes.

Anatomy of a tuning file

{
  "name": "Josh Homme Special (GGDGDD)",
  "productId": "com.themusicologygroup.vintageguitar.tu101strobetuner",
  "strings": [
    {
      "cents": 10,
      "note": 7,
      "octave": 2
    },
    {
      "cents": 0,
      "note": 7,
      "octave": 2
    },
    {
      "cents": 0,
      "note": 2,
      "octave": 3
    },
    {
      "cents": 0,
      "note": 7,
      "octave": 3
    },
    {
      "cents": 0,
      "note": 2,
      "octave": 4
    },
    {
      "cents": 10,
      "note": 2,
      "octave": 4
    }
  ],
  "version": 1
}

Each preset has a name, which is what appears in the TU101 Strobe Tuner’s tuning list, and a strings list running from the lowest string to the highest, one entry per string. For each string, note is a number from 0 to 11 counting semitones up from C (C is 0, D is 2, E is 4, G is 7, A is 9, B is 11), octave follows standard pitch notation (a guitar’s low E is octave 2), and cents nudges the target sharp or flat. Leave productId and version as they are.

Note that the strings list isn’t fixed at six. Add an entry for seven-string or remove them for bass.

Make your own

The TU101 Strobe Tuner lets you select each string individually, which sets the tuner to that string’s note. You can also adjust each string by hand. Try pushing the top and bottom pairs of the Homme tuning further apart, for instance. The string settings update as you go, so you can replace the current tuning or save it as a new one and keep experimenting.

To work with the file directly:

1. Export a tuning. You’ll get an .ampstamp file.
2. Duplicate it, rename it, and change the notes and/or cents in a text editor.
3. With AmpStamp installed, tap the file (or double-click it on a Mac). The tuning is imported automatically, and you’ll get the option to open it in the tuner.

If you build one worth sharing, post it to r/DragDropRock with the notes and cents in plain text and the JSON in a code block, so others can save it as an .ampstamp file and try it.

👉 Drag, Drop, Rock

Notes

¹ Homme, Josh. Interview by Tom Power. Q with Tom Power, CBC, Apr. 2024.

² “Why Josh Homme’s Guitar Is Purposely Out Of Tune.” YouTube, uploaded by Rick Beato 2, 28 Oct. 2026, www.youtube.com/watch?v=NE81yc52qto. Excerpted from Rick Beato, “Josh Homme: The Architect of Desert Rock,” YouTube, 2 Oct. 2026.