The Victory V40 The Duchess is a cool little 40w handmade head that brings the handiness of lunch box style amplifiers to a whole new range of guitar players. Although everyone and their mum now has a small lightweight head of their own no one has really every made one focused on the clean side. I mean a lot of them had clean channels but they were never the key focus. With the V40 they have changed that and made a single channel head that can take you from clean to mild overdrive without having to lug a 20kg combo. Just match this up with its optional highly portable 1×12 Celestion cab and you are ready to get on the road

With a single channel this amplifier is able to focus on just a couple of key sounds. You have two different voicings available in the V40. One which has a 60’s warm American feel while the other is a bit more 50’s sounding. It may not sound like a huge difference on paper but in the amp these subtle changes can make a big difference to your tone. With 40w of power you do not need to worry about your amp breaking up before you get to gigging volume.

If you want to drive it a little bit though you can absolutely do that. When the volume control goes past 2 o’clock you start to get softly driven sounds and it is not until you are near diming it that you get some real American style crunch sounds. American sounds not really your thing? Well do not fret as the V40 still has something for you. Engage the Mid Kick control and the amp goes into a slightly more 60’s British sound that will crunch up a little bit earlier

It does not end at just being a phenomenal amp though. Victory have added in some amazing little touches and features that make this amp perfect in a wide range of situations. To start off this amp has a beautiful subtle foot switchable reverb built in that is great for adding a light ambiance to your sound. Probably the most important feature is the variable power stage so you can get output levels between 0.5w and 40w so even at home you can still use the same amp as you do on stage. For those that prefer 6L6 valves over EL34 you are in luck. The V40 can work with either EL34 or 6L6 tubes so no matter what your personal preference for tone is the V40 can handle it.

As we said this amp has just a single channel but in todays world of beautiful high end pedals that only get better year after year you really don’t need anything else. You just need to set this amp up with your base sound of choice whether that is clean or dirty is your choice and then pile on the pedals. One of the main things Victory wanted this amp to be able to do was respond well to pretty much any pedal on the market. I would say that they have got it pretty much perfect in terms of its responsiveness to pedals.