Ola Englund's Killer New Signature Chug High Gain Preamp Pedal has an impressive 10 controls, including a Noise Gate - across 4 dual-concentric pots

We fans of Ola Englund and his Sunday SWOLA Show have kind of expected that Ola would eventually produce a pedal to deliver his signature sort of djent-y metal-style chug rhythm tone. Over the years we have seen Ola regularly refer to his disembodied torso mannequin ’Chuggo’ while regularly featuring his ’Will it Chug?’ Video shorts - testing the chug-ability of various mainstream pedals and amps.

Interestingly Brian Wampler launched a homage ’Chug’ pedal to Ola - with his Dracarys High Gain Distortion from back in March of 2017 - so fittingly the new ’Chug’ pedal is a sort of 5 year anniversary of that event - while to my ears Ola’s actual signature pedal is somewhat heavier sounding than its tribute.

Controls - Bass, Depth, Middle, Treble, Presence, Output, Noise Gate, Gain, Low Frequency Input Gain, High Frequency Input Gain.

I though the pedal knobs might be derived from Ola’s very successful Solar Guitars line, but they actually look quite distinctive while they are still black and similarly textured on the sides. They certainly look really cool, but lose a couple of points in practicality and usability as their indicator dots are near invisible - particularly from a standing eye-line position.

I do love seeing dual-concentric knobs - which DigiTech and Pigtronix have always done cool things with, and Boss to a slightly lesser extent. I much prefer having dual-concentric knobs than secondary functions and settings on the same knobs.

The ’Chug’ has a very useful and potent onboard Noise Gate to go with its 5-Band EQ, and it also has fairly unique LF and HF Gain Controls - respectively for Low and High Frequencies Input Gain - so you can really shape / sculpt the nature, profile and intensity of your preferred distortion texture and sound. Many refer to matching pedals to particular amps and rigs, while all those controls for me just offer more variety and versatility and are able to take you into exciting new territories - this also relies on having plenty of Volume and Gain onboard - which does seem the case here!

This projects has been 2 years in development - and I love near everything about it - including the engraved / debossed / recessed design  of the enclosure facia - including the recessed footswitch.

I think Ola could have done something a little more clever with the LED - with the footswitch recessed as it is - I would have imagined one of those circular surround LED’s would have been really cool on this pedal - but it’s a fairly minor quibble - the look is certainly appealing and distinct. The only ergonomic failings really being the inssuficenntly visible markers on the knobs. Some have also complained about the lack of other reference / marker lines for help in guiding the knobs back to the recalled sweet-spot positions - those may cause challenges for some, while I’m not sure they will mar my experience of this pedal much.

Ola and his engineers have done a fantastic job here and I feel I could really easily dial this into my favourite metal sounds. The individual tune-in-per different amp types can sound a little bit dissimilar in places - I feel that they could all have beed dialled in a little closer to each other at times - and weirdly the Marshall pair-up in some ways sounds the least impressive - especially when compared to the fairly stellar Vox output.

I’m a huge fan of these kinds of fully granularly controllable distortions - and weirdly this will probably land quite close to my Sinvertek N5 MGAT-1 which has taken somewhat longer to arrive than expected. At the point of writing this I’m not exactly sure where my ’Chug’ is either - I ordered one pretty much on first encounter on Friday when announced - but besides the initial sales confirmation there have been no further notifications - I’ve asked when those are likely to ship - but not received any replies yet - I always get nervous when companies don’t communicate properly, and as I understand it Ola has taken off on a family holiday just after the launch - so a little odd timing to a degree. But hey family, health and well-being come first!

In any case I’m really looking forward to receiving mine - and I will of course do a head-to-head with the Wampler Dracarys to see what five years of evolution sounds like!

Are any of you Ola / SWOLA fans? - SWOLA is such a good way to start your Sunday - while not every show is as classic as some of the earlier series ones, and we seem to be seeing less and less of Ola’s partner Louise - where I particularly used to enjoy their Taste Testing sessions with bundles of different countries’ snacks and confectionary - sent in by fans!

The Chug High Gain Preamp is available right now from Ola’s Solar Guitar Webstore - for an actually very reasonable price of $199 which includes worldwide shipping. Hopefully I get hands on mine fairly soon!

Note that I believe these are coming to Solar Dealers too fairly imminently!