Victory and Thorpy FX announce five V1 overdrive pedals
September 29, 2022 · 3 sources
Victory Amplification announced the V1 series on September 29, 2022, a line of five overdrive pedals designed with Adrian Thorpe of Thorpy FX and based on the company's Copper, Duchess, Jack, Kraken and Sheriff guitar amps12. Each pedal is built around a single footswitch intended to encapsulate one amp1.
Each V1 pedal has Volume and Gain controls plus Bass, Middle and Treble23. The enclosures use a steel chassis1, true-bypass switching, and are made in the UK2. Victory's descriptions of the five, as reported: the Duchess emulates the V40 Duchess and covers vintage American clean, clean boost and American-style gain; the Copper covers 1960s British blues rock through 1970s classic British rock; the Jack is based on the V30 Jack designed with Guthrie Govan and runs from low-gain, barky sounds to over-the-top gain; the Sheriff goes from vintage channel sounds to 1980s hard rock; and the Kraken moves from British-voiced gain to American high gain12.
The pedals are priced at $249 in the US12.
Martin Kidd, Victory's chief designer, said of the collaboration:
"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… At Victory, we have the knowhow, of course; however, being able to make use of Adrian's (Thorpy'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."
Thorpe said working with Kidd and the Victory team required more precision "to do their amp designs justice in solid state pedal form," and that the project took a long time with repeated returns to the drawing board1.