Benson Amps Portable Distortion 424 MKII vs Walrus Audio Iron Horse V3
The Benson Amps Portable Distortion 424 MKII and the Walrus Audio Iron Horse V3 are both pedals sharing compressed. The Benson Amps Portable Distortion 424 MKII leans saturated and edge of breakup. The Walrus Audio Iron Horse V3 leans high gain and mid-forward. Current prices: $199 vs $211.28.
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Blended from circuit-archetype lineage, dynamic feel, tone-signal overlap and tone-vector distance — the tone vector itself is derived from editorial description text, not a measured acoustic signal, so this reflects how similarly the catalog copy describes the two, not a lab measurement. Shown only within a gear class, and only where there's enough evidence to be meaningful.45% — somewhat different
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Derived from overlapping tonal signals across both listings.- compressed
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Citation/mention fame — how often this gear is cited across artist rigs and gear discussion.$199via Reverb
$211.28via Reverb
The Benson Amps 424 MKII is a preamp and distortion pedal designed to recreate the saturation and harmonic character of the input stage of the Tascam Portastudio 424 MkII cassette four-track recorder. The circuit captures the non-linear behavior of cassette-era input electronics, spanning from subtle coloration and clean boost through compressed broadband distortion and unstable breakup. A switchable front-end buffer fundamentally alters the gain structure: engaged, it presents a high-impedance guitar input with tighter low end and increased headroom; bypassed, the circuit returns to a darker, fuzzier low-impedance cassette response. Four controls -- gain, trim, bass, treble -- cover a wide EQ range. Internal 18V operation provides increased headroom. Made by Benson Amps in Portland, Oregon.
The Walrus Audio Iron Horse LM308 V3 is a high-gain distortion built on the LM308 op-amp at the heart of the ProCo RAT, delivering meaty, punchy, gnarly dirt that gets genuinely rowdy in front of an amp. It is not a straight RAT clone: the highs are rolled back and the bass more accentuated, giving a thicker, darker and slightly fuzzier voice with a smoother midrange, less presence and less flattening of the guitar's natural low-end bloom than the original. The V3's headline change is a continuous clipping dial that blends between different clipping diodes, reaching hybrid textures no single-diode circuit can produce, from tight and compressed to loose and open. It adds top-mounted jacks, a soft-relay true bypass switch and a fixed volume drop-off with the distortion knob at minimum.
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Genres this gear is documented as being used in.- Electronic
- Experimental
- Indie
- Indie Rock
- metal
- punk
- hard rock
- saturated
- edge of breakup
- harmonically rich
- bright
- fuzzy
- transparent
- high gain
- mid-forward
- tight