Solar Chug EQ Boost

The Solar Chug EQ Boost is an EQ and boost pedal from Solar Guitars, and the third pedal in the company's Chug series¹. It combines a three-band EQ, where each band can be cranked or crushed, with a high-pass filter and a boost stage, all in the same CHUG chassis Solar uses across its pedal line¹. Delicious Audio describes it as delivering "bone-crushing boost and EQ with razor-sharp clarity and whisper-quiet noise levels"¹.

What it does and how it is controlled

The pedal gives you three EQ bands, each of which can be boosted or cut hard, plus a high-pass filter that removes low frequencies so the guitar can slice through a mix¹. Delicious Audio's write-up frames the pedal as a gateway tone tool: it is designed to feed your distortion and fuzz pedals with whatever shape of signal you want, like the original Solar Chug before it¹. A boost pedal of this kind is as much about driving the next pedal or the amp's input as it is about EQ.

Guitar Pedal X counted 11 controls on the unit when Solar unveiled it in March 2025²³, which puts it on the flexible end of the EQ pedal spectrum: more direct shaping than a simple clean boost with a tilt control, though Solar has not published a full control-by-control breakdown.

Where it goes in the chain

Placement is one of the pedal's selling points. According to Delicious Audio, it works¹:

• In front of your amp, to ignite the front end
• In the amp's FX loop, to dominate the tone stack
• Anywhere in your pedalboard chain
• Before or after amp-in-a-box pedals and modelers
• Before a recording interface¹

That flexibility means you can use it to push an overdrive harder at the front of the chain, or to reshape an amp-style pedal's output after it. The same logic applies to modelers and recording setups: it shapes whatever sits downstream of it¹.

Bass players

The pedal is not guitar-only. Delicious Audio says of it: "And yeah, it absolutely slays on bass too"¹. For bass players, the three bands and the high-pass filter offer the same sculpting options, and its stated role as a feeder for distortion and fuzz pedals applies equally to a bass rig.

The third pedal in the Chug series

The Chug EQ Boost is the third pedal in the Chug series by Solar Guitars¹. It shares the same CHUG chassis as Solar's other pedals, which Delicious Audio calls "the same indestructible, battle-ready CHUG chassis"¹. The series relationship matters for tone: the EQ Boost is positioned as a companion to the original Solar Chug, feeding distortion and fuzz pedals the way that pedal does, but with the EQ stage added¹.

What a reviewer said

Stefan Karlsson at Guitar Pedal X covered the unveiling in March 2025 and was positive about it, with one caveat about his own bench²:

In other words, a reviewer who already owns a parametric EQ considered the Chug EQ Boost worth buying on its own merits².

How it compares

Against other boost-plus-EQ pedals, the Chug EQ Boost sits at the affordable end²:

The Diamond Boost/EQ takes a simpler approach, a clean boost with a tilt EQ rather than separate bands⁷, while the KSR Eros pairs a boost with a 3-band active EQ for precision sculpting, and KSR suggests using it before or after their Ceres pedal for more control over its tones⁵. The Chug EQ Boost's three bands plus high-pass filter and its 11 controls put it closer to the Eros in flexibility, at a lower price.

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