DANELECTRO
Nichols 1966
TESTED BY ART THOMPSON
THIS NEW DANELECTRO pedal has the distinction of being a reissue of a stompbox that company owner and Foxx founder Steve Ridinger designed and started making at his home in Nichols Canyon Place in Hollywood, when he was just 14. Ridinger says he built the first five or six pedals — which featured a circuit that wasn’t a clone of anything and produced a sound midway between distortion and fuzz — and then found a guy nearby to build the rest of the pedals. Ridinger went on to sell some 3,000 of them — while he was still in high school!
The Nichols 1966 is a reissue of Steve Ridinger’s own original-design dirt pedal.
The Nichols 1966 squeezes a lot into a compact format, wielding controls for fuzz, drive, tone and volume, all topped with Deco-style “arrow” knobs that look like they’re from an old Bakelite table radio. There’s also a mini-toggle with Stock and Mid Cut settings.