Solar Chug Capo

The Solar Chug Capo is a digital pitch-shifter pedal from Solar Guitars, the company founded by guitarist Ola Englund. Billed as "a digital bi-directional capo," it transposes your guitar up or down in semitone increments across a full octave in either direction, so you can drop tune or capo up without touching your tuners¹. It entered the pitch-shifting market as the fifth release in Solar's CHUG pedal series and the company's first digital product in that line²³.

The pedal was built around a specific brief. Englund wanted "something fast, something tight, and something specifically made for metal rhythm playing," and Solar claims the Chug Capo delivers the lowest-latency performance in its class, roughly half that of the other big players⁴. Solar describes it as "the fastest and most transparent-sounding pitch shifter to date, especially when it comes to tight rhythm playing, chords, and pinch harmonics"¹.

What it does and how it is controlled

The core function is capo-style transposing: the chrome-finish stompbox shifts up and down by one octave in semitone increments¹. Left and Right Arrow buttons set the interval anywhere from -12 to +12 semitones³. A bright display shows where you are¹.

The pedal has two modes, Mix and Fav¹:

The Mix dial is what lets the Chug Capo double as an octaver: blend the pitched signal with your dry tone and a -12 setting gives you an octave-down layer under your original guitar³. Guitar World lists the full control set as Pitch +/-, mix, Fav and an on/off footswitch⁴.

The LED colors carry meaning. Red means the pedal is engaged, blue means Mix mode is on with 50 percent dry signal mixed in, and green means the Fav preset is active. There are no color differences between up and down shifts⁴³.

Power and connections

Power comes from a 9V DC supply drawing 180mA, according to Guitar World's review⁴. Premier Guitar's launch report gave the figure as 9V at 200mA, which it called "pedalboard friendly"². The two reports disagree on the exact draw, so plan your power supply for the higher figure.

Connections are 1/4" inputs and outputs, a 3.5mm non-latching switch input for an external switch, 9V DC and USB-C⁴. There is no MIDI connectivity, which Guitar World's reviewer flagged as a limitation: "its lack of MIDI connectivity harms its compatibility in modern rigs"⁴. Players running MIDI-controlled pedalboards will not be able to integrate it that way.

Where it came from

Solar Guitars announced the Chug Capo on June 29, 2026, with Guitar World reporting the company's entry into the pitch-shifting market at a $249 price¹⁴. Guitar Pedal X reported the release on July 1, 2026, noting it as the fifth Solar CHUG pedal and that it was available immediately from the Solar Guitars Webstore³. Premier Guitar highlighted the build: "Rugged and durable chassis is tour ready"². Six demos are included with the pedal³.

What reviewers said

Guitar World's reviewer, Attila Voros, tested the shifting performance and came away positive on the core job: the Chug Capo "aces the test with artifact-free shifts up to +/-7 semitones while retaining the original tone and handling fast passages and chords comfortably"⁴. The same review found the pedal great for metal rhythms but overly compressed for clean tones, and found shifts less convincing past about plus or minus 8 semitones⁴. The lack of MIDI was its other noted drawback⁴.

Guitar Pedal X's Stefan Karlsson took a favorable view of the design and the tracking: "It's a very cool looking device for sure - while it does have stiff competition in that category - but possibly nothing that quite matches this degree of latency or its sharp looks"³.

That claim is the maker's own; the reviewer testing bears out the tight-rhythm part of it, with the caveat that clean playing and the outer shift ranges are where the pedal is at its least convincing⁴.

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