Victory Amplification V4 The Duchess Powered Preamp Pedal

A word from Martin Kidd, Victory's Chief Designer...

“Victory has always valued portability and great tone: our Compact Series heads have been on professional stages all over the world since their introduction in 2013. In 2019 we introduced the V4 Pedal Preamps: the world’s first guitar pedal preamps with four valves. They are a fantastic solution for players who want a pro-standard valve preamp/front end to augment their existing amps, or indeed for pedalboards, fly rigs and/or rented amps.

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“The new V4 Guitar Amp was the obvious way forward: let’s add a lightweight power section to that all-valve front end. We knew we could design a superb sounding amp that wasn’t compromised by a lack of power, lifeless tone or burdened with endless options that you never use. Instead it partners our heritage in great valve tone with a laughably lightweight yet seriously loud solid-state power section.

"The result is a simple, professional-grade guitar amp that you can take anywhere. The front end takes your drive pedals exactly as you want it to, there’s an effects loop, plus on-board digital reverb and tremolo for ambience.

​“What about speaker emulation and IRs? We’ve deliberately left them out. Everyone we talk to seems to prefer their own personal IR solution, whether that’s hardware or software. There are a great many options available and the pace of development in that world is vertical. The great news is that V4 The Duchess Guitar Amp will run happily without a speaker load if you just want to use the direct output... or run a speaker cab and the DI however you see fit.

"It’s quite the little box!”

V4 The Duchess can put out a staggering 180 watts at 4-ohms (through the Victory V112 Neo cabinet, for example). However, 4-ohm speaker cabs aren’t exactly common, and nor are single speakers that can take 180 watts, so please proceed with caution with a 4-ohm load.

However…

​The nature of Class D, solid-state power sections such as this means that the amp’s output is dependant on the speaker load. If you use a more common 8-ohm cab, output power drops to approximately 90 watts. 16-ohms gives you a still-very-healthy 45 watts.​

The principle reason we went with the 180-watt output is because lower-powered solid-state devices can run out of volume and headroom very quickly once you get to 8- and 16-ohm loads.

 No such problem here: there’s plenty of power no matter what cab you use.

Going direct with IRs?

Many people like to go direct when either recording or playing live, using digital speaker impulse responses instead of physically mic’ing an actual cab. It’s incredibly convenient for quiet stages and ‘silent’ recording or practise at home.

​V4 The Duchess Guitar Amp comes ready for this. It will operate safely with no speaker load attached, so you can run straight to your speaker modelling solution, front of house or recording DAW with a direct feed. You can also have a speaker attached if you want.

​We have deliberately chosen to NOT include any digital speaker simulation technology in V4 The Duchess Guitar Amp itself. They are available widely in hardware and software formats and everybody seems to prefer something different. We’ll leave that decision to you in the knowledge that the IR market is developing at lightning pace.

Your V4 The Duchess Guitar Amp is simple, loud and highly portable. It will remain relevant and great sounding for years to come!