Earthquaker Devices Zoar Dynamic Audio Grinder

Earthquaker Devices Zoar Dynamic Audio Grinder

This meticulously crafted box has six knobs that allow you to truly customize your sound with the Level, Weight, Gain, Bass, Middle, and Treble controls. The red LED light indicates when the distortion is activated by the Flexi-Switch® enabled footswitch.

The Gain control on Zoar goes from the edge of break up all the way over the cliff into the crunchy, grinding abyss. The character of the distortion is heavily dependent on the setting of the Weight control as well as your guitar’s pickup type, and it is further fine-tuned by the EQ section.

Zoar is a highly interactive medium-high gain discrete distortion (using only transistors; no opamps or diodes in here!) that has that highly sought after touch sensitive amp-like quality. Featuring a three band passive EQ section, it has been finely tuned to create a highly tweakable hi-fi and modern sounding distortion, but with the ghosts of old school circuitry to deliver a grind that is both instantly familiar and delightfully unique.

While having its roots in a very familiar past, the passive 3-band EQ has been finely tuned for modern tones. While this style of tone shaping seems simple on the surface, it is deceptively complex and highly interactive.

The 3-band EQ and Gain controls give you nearly unlimited options with great focus and sensitive precision, but the real powerhouse of Zoar is the Weight control. This control dictates the amount of low end that is passed into the circuit, thus controlling the entire character of the pedal. From a mere clean boost to a high gain distortion to overdrive to the crispy Hi-Fi fuzz territory, this function gives you everything.

The Level control hits unity gain around noon, but this is dependent on where the other controls are set. In addition to controlling the output volume, it also plays a small part in the controlling the voice of Zoar. By adjusting the Level control with any combination of EQ (boosting the frequency bands and cutting the output volume), you can achieve drastically different curves that have the feel of the more traditional low pass filter type tone control.