The Exar HR-03 Hammer is a distortion pedal from Exar, a pedal maker of Polish origin. The published impression of it comes from the Guitar FX Layouts blog, which traced the circuit and described it as "quite nice modern metal distortion with reasonable frequency characteristics," adding that it "should be enough gain too" for players who want a lot of it1.
What it does
The Hammer sits in the metal distortion camp: the circuit was traced by Vitalii, whose traces of Exar pedals also produced layouts for the Exar MT-1 Metal and the Exar MM-04 Moon Metal1. Exar pedals rarely turn up in demo videos, and the Hammer is no exception: the blog noted that "like so many of these pedals of Polish origin, this one seems to have no demos available either," so hearing one before buying is difficult1.
Building one from a layout
Because the circuit has been traced, hobbyists can build the Hammer at home on stripboard. The Guitar FX Layouts blog published a vero (stripboard) and tagboard layout of the pedal in December 20221.
The blog suggests one mod point for builders: the 47K resistor at the top of the layout, the horizontal one, "may be a point to tweak for even more over the top gain"1.
Sources (1)
- Guitar FX Layouts: Exar HR-03 Hammer, tagboardeffects.blogspot.com, 2022-12-09
