Exar
Exar OD-2
Here’s a fairly unique OD from the mid-nineties and the Polish pedal manufacture Exar Electronix. It’s a soft clipping drive based around a simple discrete opamp topography. Originals have J113 JFETs, but others should work just fine. More info on FSB.
Exar HM-02 Heavy Metal
As many others, I thought this was just a clone or a close derivate to the Boss HM2. We couldn’t be more wrong. Vitali from drunk beaver pedals opladed a schematic for it and it reveals a quite an interesting circuit. The distortion section resembles Boss DS2 with a discrete op amp and hard clipping … Read more
Exar OD-01 Overdrive
These things is getting really expensive especially since it got hyped by JHS and was included as the “XR” mode in their Bonsai pedal. It is basically a YATS/Boss-OD-1 with some value changes here and there and assymetrical soft clipping. Schematic is avaiable HERE.
Exar SF-02 Super Fuzz
Another Exar box traced by Vitali from Drunk Beaver pedals. I’ve been curious about this one for a while. It turns out that the fuzz section are a Boss DS-1 derivate. The interesting part lies in the Eq section. The Frequency pot controls both a Big Muff tonestack (with a very deep mid scoop notch) … Read more
Exar MM-04 Moon Metal
Next up from Vitalii’s traces is Moon Metal from later Exar series. Youtube demo found isn’t all that great, but there’s very nice EQ section and gain range seems quite good as well. Not a small circuit, but i think this could be quite usable.