A calculator that actually works for guitar players

Your life gets easier when you use this specific calculator regardless of what computer you use.

Two things guitar players use calculators for are distance conversions and date calculations. The distance conversions are for converting feet to inches, feet to centimeters, inches to millimeters, and so on. Date calculations are used to figure out a future date for something (such as when a warranty expires). When you buy guitars or tools or parts or whatever, that info is good to know.

The stock calculator in literally any modern operating system either buries these functions under a lot of submenus making them difficult to use, or just outright can't do the calculations you want...

...unless you use the Qalculate! calculator. Is it free? Yes, it is. Does it work in Windows? Yes. On a Mac? Yes. In Linux? Also a yes.

Qalculate! has a crazy amount of functionality to it where you can do everything in just one program instead of bouncing around to different programs or web sites to do the same thing.

See the example above. 25.5" is the Fender standard scale length, and when I want that in millimeters, all I have to type on Qalculate! is 25.5" to mm and press Enter. That's it.

What about a Gibson scale length in millimeters? No problem:

If I buy a guitar from Guitar Center, there is a 45-day return policy on that. If the date of purchase is 2023-July-10, I write that numerically as 2023-07-10 then just add 45 days like this using addDays:

...and now I know the date 45 days from 2023-07-10 is 2023-08-24. Believe me, the date calculator comes in handy a lot for figuring out fast when a warranty period ends so you can jot it down elsewhere (such as directly on the receipt).

What's the percentage increase from a Gibson 24.75" scale to Fender 25.5" scale?

Now I know it's 3.03%.

This is just scratching the surface of how good Qalculate! actually is. It has a monster amount of calculator stuff you can do in it that's genuinely useful.

Before Qalculate!, I had a few sites bookmarked to do calculations like this. Not anymore. I can do it all in one calculator now. And that makes it worth having on your computer.

Published 2023 Jul 11