Victory Kraken V1

The Victory V1 The Kraken is a compact high-gain preamp pedal from British amplifier maker Victory Amplification, the third and only compact pedal in the company's series of high-gain stompboxes¹. It is an amp-in-a-box design: all of the gain of the VX Kraken amplifier squeezed into a stompbox you can add to any rig². Where Victory's V4 preamp pedals carry real valves, the V1 Kraken is an analog pedal with no tubes at all, running on a standard 9V supply³⁴.

Victory describes it as a true collaboration between two British companies, designed and built in Britain by Martin Kidd, Chief Designer at Victory, together with award-winning pedal builder Adrian Thorpe MBE of Thorpy FX². Note that Victory's own product page reports the pedal as not available to purchase in some countries, so availability varies by region².

Two voicings from one gain knob

The V1 Kraken is all about gain, and its dual voicing works through the gain control. Keeping the gain down emulates channel 1 of the VX Kraken, a mid-to-high-gain British-sounding voice; pushing the gain up moves into channel 2, a more American high-gain attitude¹³. Delicious Audio describes the result as an articulate and crisp character, and notes the pedal works well on extended range guitars, including baritone and low-tuned instruments¹.

Victory describes the pedal as being all about gain, with the gain knob doing the work of the amp's two channels: keeping the gain down gives you channel 1 British Gain of the VX, and pushing the gain up moves into Channel 2 American high gain sounds³. That makes one knob cover both of the VX Kraken's voicings, from lower-gain British territory into modern high gain.

Controls: gain, volume and a three-band EQ

The control set is shared across the V1 series: volume, gain and a three-band EQ⁶. Victory says the three-band EQ on the V1 Kraken is incredibly versatile, and can help tailor the pedal's sound to any amp or setup you plug it into². Delicious Audio echoes this, noting the EQ section can tailor the sound to any amp or pedal configuration¹.

From the VX Kraken amp to the V1 series

The pedal is based on Victory's VX Kraken amp, which was born out of a collaboration with guitarist Rabea Massaad²¹. Victory describes the V1 stompbox as taking all the elements of the VX Kraken and packing them into pedal form³.

The V1 Kraken sits in a family of Kraken-format Victory pedals. Its siblings include a 180W power amp pedal and the bigger V4 preamp model, a two-channel tube preamp developed with Rabea Massaad that runs 1 x EC900 and 3 x CV4014 valves at high plate voltage¹⁸. The V4 Kraken was reviewed by Pedal of the Day in 2019, where Brian Johnston found it "accepts pedals without reservation and better than other preamps I've tested"⁹.

The V1 series is a compact preamp pedal series, and it is an expansive one in terms of the amp flavors it covers: The Duchess handles lower-gain silver-face Fender territory and The Copper a Vox AC30¹⁰. The Kraken V1 itself is based on the VX Kraken, an amp Victory developed in collaboration with Rabea Massaad, and the pedal takes the elements of that amp into stompbox form³.

What reviewers and demos say

In Sweetwater's demo video, Nick Bowcott presents the Kraken V1 as an amp-in-a-box pedal from Victory Amplification, handwired and handbuilt in Surrey, England, and notes that unlike its bigger brothers it contains no tubes⁴. He also points out that the entire Kraken amplifier family was developed with Rabea Massaad⁴.

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