V4 The Kraken Preamp Pedal Review

Amazingly Versatile

If your amp has an FX loop, then this pedal may be a dream come true. It's not even a pedal so much as it is the entire preamp section of the Victory Kraken. The tubes are different from the full size amp due to size requirements, but the gain staging and eq function almost identical to the real deal. Channel 1 is where you go for your classic British crunch and breakup. Perfect… read more for rock, blues, indie, punk, etc. Channel 2 is HOT. It's not the classic american metal tone of a 5150 or a rectifier, more like Channel 1 on steroids. Throw a modern OD pedal in front of it and you can even get some modern progressive metal (aka djent) tones. Big distortion without sacrificing chord definition, so go play your amaj7, nerd. On top of that, you can bypass the V4, which will re-engage the pre section of your actual amp, while keeping the other fx in your loop active. If you are planning on re-amping from your DAW, literally all you need to do is send a dry signal out, loop it through the V4, and back into your interface and cab IR of choice. This thing is crazy easy to work with. The engineers at Victory are mad scientists, and we are lucky to have them out there making gear like this.

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Tone Factory

I bought this because I was tired of trying to clean up the background noise from mic'ing my amp. After buying a Dark Glass B7K which I use direct in, I really wanted something similar for my guitar. I did some research and ran across this beast. I have always been a huge fan of old school Thrash Metal tones for their punchiness when playing palm mutes. I figured the Rectifier… read more would help that out, so I decided to give it a try. First, it works great direct in. This cleaned up my signal perfectly. And the tones!!!!! Between the two gain channels and the three way selector, the palette of tones is almost unlimited. Crank the gain and this thing screams, roll the gain back, and it gets a nice, gritty, bluesy tone. It's basically like adding a Marshall JVM and Mesa Boogie to your collection. I honestly can't think of a style of music this wouldn't work for.

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Oh its good...

First... shout out to my sales engineer Jay Aden. He rocks... best customer service ever. After a very pleasant phone call around 6 pm, where he was able to share first hand experience he had with the Kraken, provide some helpful pointers on how I might want to set it up, and then help purchasing... I got a notice that my Kraken was in shipping at 9pm... thanks for the awesome… read more service! Second... If you're looking to go ampless, I'd strongly recommend the Victory Kraken paired with a cabsim (yes, I know that's not even the real selling point of the Kraken V4... 4C method and all). I've read fantastic reviews about the Kraken V4 Preamp... they are true. I run an ampless set-up, but have wanted the warmth and presence of tubes. I play mostly worship music and wanted to base my core/clean tone around blues, so I found the Tubesteader Beekeeper (Dumble Preamp pedal with 2 12AX7 tubes) which I play into the TwoNotes Cab M+ to go direct. Works great... however I've always wanted to be able to use distortion tones more akin to a Mesa Mark 5 (without paying for a Mark 5...)... the Beekeeper doesn't do that well. Enter the Kraken (A/B looper lets me switch between Beekeeper and Kraken). Blown away. Sounds great. Real tube warmth. Very tight distortion with a lot of presence and chime. The treble notes cut through the distortion without feeling like icepicks.. the bass/mids have a presence that sounds like reverb without even having my reverb pedal turned on. I was afraid it MIGHT be too much gain, but it is fully capable of a light "pushed clean" sound that is very pleasant, through classic rock, all the way up into heavy chug. Extremely versatile IMO.

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Amazing Product

I wanted more dynamic tone than what my Rocker 15 had to offer, but I also didn't want to go through the routine of selling it. I picked the Kraken preamp, and I've found great metal tones with it all while keeping everything that I like about the rocker 15 when I bypass the Kraken. I doesn't need a boost, but I slammed my Plumes pedal in front to see what would happen, and it's… read more makes the green channel a fierce competitor for metal tone. I highly recommend running this setup!

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Great tones, very versatile

This isn't just a high gain pedal, The lower gain channel can handle blues and classic rock nicely while the higher gain can go from JCM-800 tones all the way to metal. The gain is useful throughout the range of the knob whereas many amps/preamps start to get muddy at their highest gain settings. Of course you have all the inputs and outputs of the other V4 devices so you can… read more run them in the 4 cable mode if you want to. I don't. I run the Kracken into a Line6 HX Stomp XL and use it's cab sim and effects.

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