Catalinbread Carbide Purple Gaze vs Walrus Audio Iron Horse V3

The Catalinbread Carbide Purple Gaze and the Walrus Audio Iron Horse V3 are both pedals sharing mid-forward, high gain, tight. The Catalinbread Carbide Purple Gaze leans transparent and saturated.

Similarity
citedBlended 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.

53% moderately similar

Shared tone character
citedDerived from overlapping tonal signals across both listings.
  • mid-forward
  • high gain
  • tight
  • compressed
Citation fame
citedCitation/mention fame — how often this gear is cited across artist rigs and gear discussion.
0%
0%
Price

$186.99via Reverb

Description

The Catalinbread Carbide Purple Gaze is a limited color edition of the Portland boutique builder's Carbide high-gain distortion pedal. The Carbide delivers a tight, amp-like distortion character modeled on a cranked high-gain amplifier front end with natural feel and dynamic response. Controls include gain, tone, and volume, with the circuit emphasizing midrange character and pick sensitivity throughout the gain range. The Purple Gaze edition shares the identical circuit with the standard Carbide, differing only in finish. Suited for hard rock, classic metal, and high-gain blues players seeking amp-like distortion with feel.

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.

Genres
citedGenres this gear is documented as being used in.
  • Hard Rock
  • Djent
  • Blues
  • Metal
  • punk
  • metal
  • hard rock
Tonal lean
  • transparent
  • saturated

Related searches

Catalinbread Carbide Purple Gaze vs Walrus Audio Iron Horse V3 — Shared Character & Differences — NodeTone