EarthQuaker Devices Zoar vs Walrus Audio Iron Horse V3
The EarthQuaker Devices Zoar and the Walrus Audio Iron Horse V3 are both pedals. The EarthQuaker Devices Zoar leans edge of breakup and dynamic. The Walrus Audio Iron Horse V3 leans high gain and mid-forward. Current prices: $129 vs $210.75.
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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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Citation/mention fame — how often this gear is cited across artist rigs and gear discussion.$129via Reverb
$210.75via Reverb
The EarthQuaker Devices Zoar Dynamic Audio Grinder is a medium-to-high-gain discrete distortion built entirely from transistors with no op-amps or clipping diodes, giving it a touch-sensitive, amp-like character. It spans fattened clean boost, crunchy speaker breakup, muscular distortion, and stabs of hi-fi fuzz, with a dynamic response reminiscent of cranking the master volume on a Marshall or Orange. A three-band active EQ plus a distinctive Weight control sets how much low end feeds the circuit, dramatically reshaping the voice from tight and crumbly to thick and blown out. It is highly tweakable and reactive to picking and guitar volume, suiting rock and heavier styles that want amp-like grind from a pedal.
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.- Blues
- Rock
- Hard Rock
- metal
- punk
- hard rock
- edge of breakup
- dynamic
- crunchy
- harmonically rich
- transparent
- fuzzy
- high gain
- mid-forward
- tight