victory V4 ‘The Sheriff’ pedal

£349

Ever wanted to change your valve amp’s basic character at the flick of a switch? That’s the handy premise of Victory’s new V4 series of preamp pedals (see review, p114), which provides two extra channels for your amp. Thanks to deft design, however, it’s not much trickier to use than a Tube Screamer. The V4 Sheriff is best used with a four-cable system, so that when the V4 is bypassed, your signal runs straight into the front of your amp as normal. Switch the V4 Sheriff on, however, and it re-routes your signal through its own valve-powered innards, flavouring the tone in a gutsy, Marshall-inspired style before sending it to the effects loop return of your amp, thus replacing your amp’s in-built preamp stage – until you switch it off again. As Victory makes several flavours of V4, from the JTM45-esque Sheriff to the more metal-oriented, high-gain Kraken, the potential for tone expansion is huge. This one’s our fave, though. www.victoryamps.com