Cog Effects Mini 66

The Cog Effects Mini 66 is a compact overdrive pedal aimed at bass players, launched in May 2016 alongside its larger sibling, the Knightfall 66. It takes the core of the Knightfall 66 circuit and fits it into a 1590A enclosure, the same small box Cog Effects used for its T-16 Octave and Tarkin Fuzz pedals¹. The trade-off is simple: you lose the second channel, but you keep nearly everything else, in a footprint small enough for a crowded pedalboard.

Both pedals came out of what Premier Guitar described as the Knightfall design being "supercharged into two new overdrive pedals"¹. MusicRadar reported the pair as available now at launch, in May 2016².

A single-channel Knightfall 66 built into a 1590A box

The Mini 66 is a stripped-down version of the Knightfall 66 rather than a different circuit. Premier Guitar's launch coverage put it plainly: the second channel is removed, "yet still offers nearly all the features of the Knightfall 66"¹. Guitar Interactive Magazine likewise noted it "retains many of the features of the larger Knightfall 66"³.

What that means in practice: the full-size Knightfall 66 carries two Gain knobs that you can switch between with an A/B footswitch, effectively giving you two overdrive/distortion settings on one pedal¹. The Mini 66 has one channel, one gain structure. MusicRadar's take was that while the Knightfall 66 offers two different overdrive/distortion settings, the Mini 66 "offers a similar range of sounds" from its single channel².

The size saving is real. The 1590A format is one of the smallest standard pedal enclosures, and Cog Effects already used it for the T-16 Octave and Tarkin Fuzz, so the Mini 66 sits in a box players with those pedals will already know³. The larger Knightfall 66, by contrast, lives in a CNC-engraved Hammond 1590BB aluminum enclosure⁴.

The controls: Fat and Cut switches

The biggest difference in day-to-day use is not the missing channel but the controls. On the Knightfall 66, two knobs shape the overdrive's frequency balance⁴¹:

On the Mini 66, the Voice and Tone knobs are replaced by two switches: Fat and Cut. Each switch offers three different settings¹. Guitar Interactive Magazine highlighted the practical benefit: "Both switches have three different settings, giving a wide range of easily repeatable settings"³.

That repeatability is the point. A knob gives you continuous adjustment, but returning to exactly the same spot is a matter of feel and memory. A three-position switch gives you a small number of distinct, recallable voices, which suits a pedal this size aimed at players who want one core overdrive sound they can find again in the dark on stage.

The underlying architecture is the same as the big pedal: Fat works the low end before the clipping circuit, and Cut works the high end after it, so you are shaping what goes into the drive and what comes out of it independently¹.

Build and power

Cog Effects builds each Mini 66 one at a time, and both the Mini 66 and Knightfall 66 are hand-built and designed in the UK¹⁴. Internally, Gearnews noted a construction detail that matters for a pedal meant to live on a working board: "Cog Effects use jack plugs which are not mounted on the PCB, which should make them very robust"⁴. Jack sockets soldered directly to a circuit board are a common failure point when a plug gets knocked; off-board wiring avoids that.

Power comes from a 9 volt standard DC input³. The maker's product page for the Knightfall 66 specifies 9V DC center negative and notes that pedal can be powered up to 18V for increased headroom and a more dynamic feel⁵; the Mini 66's published specification is the 9 volt input. Both pedals use true bypass switching, so the circuit drops out of the signal path entirely when the pedal is off¹².

What reviewers said

Launch coverage was positive about the concept. Gearnews' reviewer looked at the control set across both pedals and felt that the extent of control available would lead to better results⁴. On the Mini 66 specifically, the same reviewer identified a clear audience for it: "if you already have a crowded pedal board or are just after one core overdrive sound then this could be the one for you"⁴.

MusicRadar framed the two pedals as a straightforward choice between flexibility and size, with the Knightfall 66's two settings on one side and the Mini 66's similar range of sounds in the smaller box on the other².

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