Like many innovations, Cyber-Tone was born out of necessity. As an electrical engineer and singer with the Ambassadors of Harmony, I was approached by one of our pitch pipe guys to see if I could repair our old electronic pitch pipes. I suggested that it might be easier to just buy a new one, only to be told that they were no longer available, and nothing like them existed on the market. We considered using traditional pitch pipes, but I learned they are never fully in tune and often don’t agree with each other in pitch. And so, the Cyber-Tone journey began.
A vision started to take shape: to create the most advanced electronic pitch pipe ever made, while maintaining the simplicity needed to play the right pitch on stage and during rehearsals. I reached out to my friend Dave for help throughout the process. It wasn’t easy—there were countless nights spent brainstorming, testing prototypes, and working hard to make it loud enough. I had the benefit of being able to bounce ideas off of some barbershop legends inside of my chorus to ensure that Cyber-Tone would work for choruses. We refined the design over and over to meet all these needs: perfect pitch accuracy, loud and clear tones, compact and user-friendly design, micro-tuning capabilities, and a rechargeable battery.
We also had a little fun along the way, programming the Cyber-Tone to teach you the Cyber-Tone tag: Perfect Pitch Every Time – Cyber-Tone.
During one rehearsal, we were struggling to stay on pitch in a particular section. Our director asked the pitch pipe guys to keep blowing the pitch. We repeated the section over and over while my prototype Cyber-Tones kept playing that pitch. This is how Sticky Tones came to be, which also frees up your hands if you want to tune an instrument. On another occasion, we were rehearsing our uptune with a metronome in the background to stay on tempo. The pitch of the metronome was in a different key and became distracting to me. I wondered, why can’t we pick the key the metronome plays in? I did some research and realized no one had done this! That’s how we created the Perfect Pitch Metronome feature—to play in your key, at your tempo.
Cyber-Tone is a family business and is made in the USA with USA components. Our circuit boards are manufactured in Washington State, using chips primarily made in Texas, and the cases are printed in Illinois. Dave and his kids handle the final assembly in their kitchen, then ship them to me. My family helps print labels and test each unit for functionality before we carefully pack them, and take them to the post office. Cyber-Tone is the culmination of a passion for both music and innovation. It’s not just a business; it’s my way of giving back to the musical community that has shaped me. I hope that Cyber-Tone can play a small part in helping you and your musical group create beautiful music to share with the world.
In Harmony,
Will Jarrett – Founder Cyber-Tone
