Virtual strobe vs. mechanical strobe

Thanks again to all who have offered advice on tuners. I've been
corresponding with a support person at Peterson about their tuners, having
thought I would go for the VSAM when it comes out. However, he suggests that
for microtuning percussion instruments, the mechanical strobe is far
superior. I'll append a few of his comments below. Just wondering whether
this sounds accurate to people on this list--or whether he's just trying to
sell me a more expensive solution.

Many thanks,

Stan

-------
... I would urge you to consider a real strobe. For percussion nothing else
really works. I speak from experience, I worked with German experimental
band Einstürzende Neubauten for 10 years (among other types the instruments
we built were metal, plastic, and electronic percussive, stringed and wind
instruments tuned to many different intonation systems). I could not have
done it without a mechanical strobe tuner.

The advantage of the mechanical strobe over other types (including VS-1 &
V-SAM) is that the display offers much more information about the sound
being analysed. Other tuners pick out the dominant partial and attempt to
display that, since in the area of tuned percussion, the signal´s complexity
causes that dominant partial to jump around quite a bit (at least in raw
non-tuned form) you will be frustrated by the erratic readout of a
non-Strobe display as it tries unsucessfully to keep up! A mechanical strobe
however, can handle more than one tone and can even display simultaneously
in some cases. It also shows you the amplitude or intensity of the different
constituents of a tone, and after a while you will recognise tonal
characteristics visually as well as aurally. A real strobe has much more
programming and memory capacity, and the readout is much more suitable for
non 12TET systems.

This is why percussion manufacturers such as Musser, Ludwig, Marimba One,
Malletech, Ross Mallet, Sabian Cymbals, Sonor etc. and almost all Steelpan
builders and Tap-tuners favor the mechanical strobe.
....