Our Story

My Name is Jonathan, I am the Owner and Designer behind all our products.

I have been playing guitar since 2006 and since I started playing, I have been through a lot of different pedalboards, layouts and pedals.

It all started in a church in Tampa, FL in a small church that my family helped start many years ago. I was a drummer and that was the only instrument I knew. My father and I were recently returning to this church as we had been helping at another church for some time. I was going to a youth event and there was no “Formal” band. So, it was up to the teenagers to make some music happen. The problem for me was, there was already a drummer there. So, I sat in the back and was trying to figure out what to do while I just sat there. Suddenly, the guitarist in the newly formed youth band strolls up to me with another guitar in their hand and gestures the guitar at me and says you’re a guitarist now. I looked up at them purely shocked and said “Ok, right, but I have no clue how to play.” They laughed and said, “Figure it out”.

At this moment, my life changed. That night, I pounded away at the songs we played with single fingered bar chords. It sounded ATROCIOUS. But, that night sparked a roaring and unstoppable passion for this instrument and a journey that will never be over for me. I went home and for weeks and months, I taught myself chords and notes and the fretboard.

I started with what every teen in the mid 2000’s started with in the “Modern” worship scene. Hillsong United. I studied their guitarists trying to figure out how they sounded so good. It was immediately obvious…. PEDALS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It didn’t take long before I had my dad in the garage with some plywood making me my first pedalboard. I had drawn up a design and everything with dimensions based upon what I thought my board would need in the way of pedals. I even had a built-in riser platform for a 2nd row of pedals.

I made that board work for a few years, and it was by todays standards… mediocre. But at the time, to me, it was awesome. I will never forget the feeling of buying my first pedals, the pure exhilaration.

When I purchased my first, more “Legit” board, everything changed again. By this point, I was playing services at church and live performances 4-6 times a week. This is where I started noticing an issue. I no longer had my built in riser and it was making it way harder to quickly engage effects on the 2nd row without incidentally kicking another knob or engaging another effect. This problem went on for a few years as I didn’t take the time to figure it out and instead just kicked certain pedals off my board so I could space things out and make it work.

By 2015, I got in to a way more legit board and started really investing in my rig as I was playing for a lot larger audiences and playing even more often.

This is where the first iterations of the pedal riser solutions we offer today appear. I started experimenting with sizes and shapes and figuring out how I could cram everything I needed on my board and using pedal risers, Keep everything accessible.

I had a TON of prototypes that I tried and after a few years, I homed in on the designs that worked. I have used these designs for years now without failures.

Which leads us to where I started NICHOLLS CUSTOM DESIGNS.

I have had a bunch of guitarists that I’ve played with over the last few years reach out to me and ask me how I was achieving the risers I was making for myself and ultimately asking for assistance in making risers for them. At this point, I realized that there was a need outside of my own personal use for the pedal risers that I make.

While creating the product line that we offer for pedal riser solutions, I realized that there were other pedalboard accessories that I always wished I had. So, I am now creating these accessories for pedalboards and constantly designing and innovating to help everyone achieve their goals for their pedalboard.

I have always done everything I could to utilize every millimeter of space on my pedalboard. I refuse to have dead space. I know that there are other guitarists out there that wish to do the same with their pedalboards.

I am extremely passionate about guitar, gear and specifically pedalboards.

My Goal is to help you and every other guitarist that I possibly can to “Build Your Board Your Way”.