Victory Amplification V4 Guitar Amp The Duchess

V4 The Duchess partners a V4 Series all-valve preamp with a solid-state, 180-watt Class D power amp. Its ultra-compact size and negligible weight disguise the huge tones it can produce. It's great for home and studio players looking for an elegant solution on a small cab or desktop, or for touring musicians who need a great-sounding, dependable pedal platform amp. Speaker choice is critical with V4 The Duchess Guitar Amp V4 The Duchess can put out a staggering 180 watts at 4-ohms (through the Victory V112 Neo cabinet, for example). However, 4-ohm speaker cabs aren’t exactly common, and nor are single speakers that can take 180 watts, so please proceed with caution with a 4-ohm load. However…​ The nature of Class D, solid-state power sections such as this means that the amp’s output is dependant on the speaker load. If you use a more common 8-ohm cab, output power drops to approximately 90 watts. 16-ohms gives you a still-very-healthy 45 watts. ​The principle reason we went with the 180-watt output is because lower-powered solid-state devices can run out of volume and headroom very quickly once you get to 8- and 16-ohm loads. No such problem here: there’s plenty of power no matter what cab you use. Going direct with IRs? Many people like to go direct when either recording or playing live, using digital speaker impulse responses instead of physically mic’ing an actual cab. It’s incredibly convenient for quiet stages and ‘silent’ recording or practise at home. V4 The Duchess Guitar Amp comes ready for this. It will operate safely with no speaker load attached, so you can run straight to your speaker modelling solution, front of house or recording DAW with a direct feed. You can also have a speaker attached if you want. ​We have deliberately chosen to NOT include any digital speaker simulation technology in V4 The Duchess Guitar Amp itself. They are available widely in hardware and software formats and everybody seems to prefer something different. We’ll leave that decision to you in the knowledge that the IR market is developing at lightning pace. Your V4 The Duchess Guitar Amp is simple, loud and highly portable. It will remain relevant and great sounding for years to come!