Taking your "tongue in cheek" seriously for the moment, I'll say that we on the harp have let ourselves go electronic. We use electronic tuners with "mic pickups" to tune. And those can use an earphone output. Not that I distrust my ear, I can still tune all 52 strings of my harp with an A fork and my ear, but it does take a lot longer as one makes the minor adjustment back and forth. My ear is still better than the tuner, but it gets you into the range at all octaves. And fifty years ago I pressed my ear to my guitar to tune in a noisy environment.
Best, Jon
