Victory Amps V1 The Kraken High Gain Preamp Pedal goes well beyond its Rabea Massaad Signature Sound roots

I personally tend to have a rather mixed appreciation of Artist Signature Pedals - as they are often somewhat restricted in their coverage and character to a fairly limited subset that represents the artist’s core signature sound. Fortunately that is far from the case for The Kraken - which rather goes beyond its signature amp roots to give you access to an extended palette of high gain and metal sounds.

This pedal had the most difficult birth as such of the recent 5 x V1’s, and the most prototype iterations, through an exhausting process of meeting some very specific usage and frequency focus / specific tuning and instrument applications. There was a time when this pedal was heading too much in the mostly one core signature sound direction - where Martin and Thorpy latterly decided to reign in those restrictions for a more expansive approach - to deliver something which covered Rabea’s tones with aplomb - but also gave you an easy inroad into other interesting areas too - for a truly potent all-rounder high gain distortion.

Rabea’s classic high gain distortion sound is a somewhat darker and denser take on the EVH 5150 style of amp - very much hewn towards a modern Mids-prominent output. So the most important dial for Rabea really is the Middle frequency band one, where he also likes to shave off a good amount of low end. Very much at the opposite end of the scale to vintage scooped sounding distortions.

Controls - Volume, Gain, Bass, Middle, Treble.

My main upfront concern about this pedal was that the core tonality would be too dark and dense - with an inability to fully dial in your own preferences - if you preferred something somewhat more open-pored and vintage-leaning versus Rabea’s more typical sound.

I need not have worried though as that marvellous 3-Band EQ tone stack really gives you all the versatility you need, with as mentioned, a pretty expansive palette.

I’m glad to report too that there is plenty of Volume and Gain on tap - in fact all the EQ dials too give you massive amounts of scope for ultimate versatility.

This is still a relatively tastefully calibrated pedal, and doesn’t go quite a s brutal as some - but there should be enough of everything onboard for most tastes. For me it’s just a really satisfying all-round high gain experience - and that V1 tone stack is proving to be so easy to dial in!

My own preferred settings tend to be currently somewhat anchored to Volume @ 4 o’c, Gain @ Max, and the 3 EQ Bands - all @ around 3 o’c - in fact right now with Middle band pretty much exactly 3 o’c, Bass closer to 2 o’c, and Treble a hair more at near 4 o’c!

This is for sure one of my favourite new high gain distortion pedal editions - it’s fascinating how different the core characters each of my recent additions have - while most have a really extended palette of tones too. This is certainly one of those Signature Pedals that goes far enough beyond its roots to offer pretty much universal appeal!

Available from the Victory Amps Webstore, and leading dealers worldwide for £199 / $249 and equivalent! And comes highly recommended.