VICTORY V1 SERIES
VICTORY AND THORPYFX TEAM-UP FOR A QUINTET OF OVERDRIVE VOICES
Since launching in 2013, Victory has gone from being a brand new company to one of the UK’S most exciting and popular amp brands. With artists such as Guthrie Govan, Rabea Massaad and Ritchie Kotzen all on board with signature products, and dozens more in its artist line-up, its range of amps and floor-based preamps includes something for every tonal outcome thanks to revered Head Designer Martin Kidd. Victory isn’t alone in its success story, though, as Adrian Thorpe MBE - a former Major in the British Army - founded Thorpyfx in 2014. Since then, his pedal designs, often themed around military names such as The Bunker, The Fallout Cloud and The Peacekeeper, have been met with widespread acclaim.
It makes sense, then, that for Victory’s latest line-up, the two UK brands have collaborated to come up with a line of pedals based on previous Victory valve amp designs, but with Thorpy’s input helping to bring them to a smaller, amp-in-a-box drive pedal format. The result is the five-strong V1 series, which includes stompbox versions of Victory’s The Sheriff, The Jack, The Duchess, The Kraken and The Copper. The Duchess is based on Victory’s V40 Duchess, which focuses on American cleans, boost and gain. The Copper goes after ’60s/‘70s British EL84 rock tones, with bluesrock/classic rock sounds achievable across the travel of its gain control.
The Jack takes the Guthrie Govan-codesigned amp circuit and distills it into a pedal, offering up “low gain, barky sounds” all the way up to “over the top gain.” The Sheriff gives us vintage rock, with enough gain on tap to nail some ’80s hard rock tones, and The Kraken delivers modern high-gain with British flavours of the Victory VX at lower settings, and American-style heavy tones when pushed.
“The idea of a collaboration was something that made a good deal of sense, as we [Victory] were to an extent, venturing into the unknown...” Says Victory’s Martin Kidd.
“At Victory, we have the knowhow, of course; however, being able to make use of Adrian’s experience and the various subtleties of his design ethic, enabled us to better appeal to the player who likes a clean amp platform; getting their various sounds from pedals.”
Thorpyfx’s Adrian Thorpe adds, “We were keen to make the V1 pedals sound as close to the full-bore valve amps as possible but working with Martin and the team meant that we had to be even more precise to do their amp designs justice in solid state pedal form. It took a long time and many times we had to go back to the drawing board. Despite this, maintaining an uncompromising nature of what the Victory sound is, means that pedal fiends worldwide can enjoy these pedals, no matter what their flavour preferences. I’m proud to say we worked on these V1 pedals.”
Each pedal is hand-built in the UK, featuring a heavy duty steel chassis. They all include a three-band EQ (apart from The Copper) with volume and gain controls, are powered by a 9V PSU. The Victory V1 series is available now, priced at £199 each.
Stuart Williams