Anyone using a Victory Kraken?

Gear
#1

Hi, I’m looking to downsize my rig from a Marshall rack to a lunchbox head. I have always loved the Marshall rock tone, but never had that liquid lead tone akin to the mesa mark series amp. The Victory Kraken looks promising, the only thing is that there are limited clips on youtube that show off the lead tone other than heavy rhythms etc. Which I like, but I’m not sure whether it can acheive a thicker warmer liquid lead. Has anyone had any experience with them? I’ll be playing variety of styles from classic rock, prog rock/metal and a little bit of blues and pop. I will be using different preamp pedals also.

Thanks on advance!

1 Like
#2

I mean, if you want the Mark-style liquid lead tone in a lunchbox format, have you considered a Mark-V:25? It won’t do as well as your Marshall rack at traditional Marshall “crunch” sounds (though, the Crunch mode on Ch1 will get you in the rough general ballpark, though using that as your rhythm gain sound means not having a footswitchable clean), but you’ll get the full range of “heavy” Mesa Mark sounds out of Ch. 2. And, it’s a small 25-watt head, switchable down to 5 watts per channel, and for a Mesa at least it’s fairly affordable.

There’s always its big brother, the Mark V, of course, and the Edge mode on Ch. 2 probably gets more marshally than Crunch (here on Ch. 2, not Ch 1, while all the gain sounds on Ch.2 on the lower wattage amps are on a 3rd channel). It’s less affordable (though they’ve been around long enough that they’re available on the secondhand market at decent prices, especially after Mesa introduced the JP2C) and much higher output, but each channel has a 90/45/10 watt switch and I’ve had no problems getting good sounds out of mine at bedroom volumes.

My experience though has been if you’re after that Mark-style thick saturated liquid lead sound, your options are either a Mesa, or a good modeler. Not too many other amps really do that.

#3

Wow, thanks for the reply! If money was no object, then I would get the mark-V, hands down. My budget is pretty small, but I’ll definitely check out the 25! I might get lucky on a secondhand!

#4

Keep an eye out there, you definitely might score a 25, 35, or 90 at a good price!

Another option would be to get a smaller head that does the Marshall sort of tone you like well, and then grab one of these:

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/FluxDriveU--mesa-boogie-flux-drive-overdrive-pedal?gclid=Cj0KCQjwzIzWBRDnARIsAAkc8hGkpA-jQe5neknwimoHyv2EheaPz5QmlVbXjB5sULuCq9UvvQHNOr4aAvTcEALw_wcB

I haven’t played one myself yet, but the clips I’ve heard make it sound a lot like a Mark-type preamp in a box.

#5

Good call. I have always tended to stay away from using pedals as my core distortion sound, but I think I should keep an open mind…

#6

Hey, same here, to be honest - I’d rather plug straight into the amp, with maybe a delay in the loop. But if you’re after a Marshall crunch and a Mark saturation in a lunchbox format, that might be your best bet.

#7

I had a Kraken, then I got a Mark V, then I didn’t need the Kraken any more.

Didn’t love it, and it’s a bit of a funny proposition with it being lunchbox sized but 50 watt and not really lunchbox-priced.

#8

Thats why I’m interested in it; 50 watts is great for a small sized head. It has low power mode for home 0.3w I think.

I didn’t think it was that badly priced (I’m in UK), but that depends on the tone quality of course).
The price for a Mark V is massive here and I’m only only interested in the lead tone. Quite a lot to spend just for one tone!

#9

Don’t worry about the low power mode, it sounded better at low volumes at 50 watt.

I think it’s a pretty decent metal rhythm amp, wouldn’t be my pick for lead. Probably comes in to it’s own most when you run 2 of them together.

#10

What was the reason for not using for lead?
I love the rhythm tone from tha Kraken as far as I have heard youtube - quite in your face and cutting through the mix, but I wondered whether the tone would be fat and juicy enough for leads.

#11

There is a thread in the Seymour Duncan forum talking about the Kraken. It doesn’t seem to be getting much love.
I however, have no personal experience with it.

#12

I’d also point out that the Victory guy is the Cornford guy. Not sure if any of the new amps have the same preamp gain circuit as the Hellcat but everyone who plays it likes it for high gain, including Andy Wood last week. The thing he played for the intro of the private session sounded awesome.

A lunchbox Hellcat, maybe with separate eq for each each channel, would be cool. That’s really the only thing I’d add to it.

#13

Personally I haven’t been quite as taken with anything I’ve heard from Victory as I have with what I’ve heard from Cornford.

Guthrie’s tone from this gig remains just about my ideal tone (while we’re here, if someone could just work out the run at 50 seconds…and teach me how to do it…) :

One day I will probably own a Hellcat* but I’m trying to convince myself that my Mesa Mark V is enough amp for one man (it is, it totally is).

*Maybe a MK50 too

#14

The mk50 was one hell of an amp. I wish I coukd have got one back in the day! The hellcat was great also - I loved the raw unique tone to it and it sounds great at lower volumes - you can even do a good blues with it. It has el84s from what I remember so the heavy rhythms weren’t quite there for me, but I would bite someones arm off for one!! Chomp chomp!

#15

I have the countess and the kraken. They are both great amps, but are different. If you need high gain and a tighter feel, the kraken is for you. Prefer a clean channel and dirty with a more vintage tone,then it’s the countess.
Also, victory is indeed Martin from Cornford. You can definitely hear some Cornford dna in his amps, but if you are particularly picky, you may need to shoot for the hand wired series. The compacts were made out of the necessity for air travel. There have been constraints because of this, like eq sharing across channels and so forth.

#16

I’m currently playing a Victory Kraken through a Torpedo Captor, in order to use the amp at home through my studio monitors.

It gets clean-ish with the Gain 1 lowered down, especially if you have a single coil equiped guitar. I’m playing a Telecaster and I can get clean tones out of it.

The second channel is a 5150 style channel, with usable gain from 1 all the way to 10.

Both channels are great, the first one needs a bit of pushing in order to get into high gain territory but it has loads of headroom, the second one doesn’t need anything, but it’s a bit more compressed.

I used to own a Marshall JVM, a Peavey 5150 combo, an Axe Fx Ultra and an Atomic Amplifire 3. The Kraken is giving me by far my favourite tones.

I’m playing various stuff, hard rock, alternative/prog metal and a bit of heavy metal. It does all those things amazingly well.