“Why is there no amp that can do a really nice clean, and a really nice gain-y tone, with a reverb on it?”: Victory satisfies Pete Honore’s tone cravings and rehouses his Deputy tube amp in a portable lunchbox format

Victory Amps has given the Deputy a makeover, rehousing the 25-watt tube amp head in a portable lunchbox format – but retaining all the original features that were developed in partnership with Pete Honore.

Unveiled at NAMM 2024, the Deputy was something that hadn’t existed before in the Victory catalogue. When Honore sat down with Victory’s designer-in-chief Martin Kidd, he told outlined his vision for what would become the Deputy.

“As you know, I’ve been really lucky to play hundreds and hundreds of amps, working on the Andertons YouTube channel,” says Honore. “And then I was lucky enough that Victory asked me to work on a new amplifier.

“I always felt there was something missing in the Victory lineup. They had their clean amps – the Duchess– and then they had the Sheriff, which was more of a Marshall-y, higher-gain Marshall, but I felt there was something missing in between those two amps.

“When I worked with Martin Kidd, I said, ‘Can we do something that can do both? Something that can do a really nice clean, but something that can also do some gain-y stuff, enough to really rock out. So the Deputy was born.”

The lunchbox Deputy is exactly the same under the hood. You’ve got one channel, a three-way voice switch, a bright switch, a three-band EQ plus gain, master volume and reverb controls. The reverb is footswitchable, and for Honore it is a big selling point for the amp.

“Why is there no amp that can do a really nice clean, and a really nice gain-y tone, with a reverb on it? So, we decided to put a reverb in it, and it is absolutely fantastic,” he says.

That reverb was already in the Victory lineup. They simply imported the digital reverb from the Duchess.

Victory x Danish Pete – The Deputy Lunchbox Head Launch! - YouTube

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As shipped, the Deputy comes with a pair of EL86 power tubes, but these can be easily swapped out for EL84s, with external bias points on the rear of the amplifier to make it easy to maximise power tube performance. The preamp houses a trio of ECC83/12AX7s.

Also around the back of the amp you'll find the effects loop. This has a lot of clean headroom so it should be a good pedalboard platform. There are 16-ohm and eight-ohm speaker outputs, a footswitch input for the reverb and a little Viking helmet to let you know that this is a Danish Pete joint.

The amp weighs just 8kg and it is priced £1,149/$1,299. See Victory Amps for more details.