NAD: Victory Sheriff 44

Desertdweller

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I've been wanting a modded Marshall sound for a while and have been going back and forth between a JCM 800 and a Silver Jubilee. Then a few weeks ago I saw Victory posting about their new Sheriff amps, which led to me reading and learning more about the company. Next thing you know, I have a last-gen Sheriff sitting here. What a great little amp, everything about it is just classy. From the smooth turning pots to the bias option on the back, it's just fantastic. Here's a couple pics and a quick riffing video with it I recorded earlier this evening.

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I liked the Victory VC35 a ton. Vox AC30 style amp in a lunchbox format with modern feature set. Sounded great, was really easy to use. Mainly sold it for space reasons as it would have been sitting unused a lot since I can't fit it (or use it) in my current apartment.

Didn't love the Sheriff 22 when I tried. Liked the Super Kraken but not enough to buy one.
 
I've been wanting a modded Marshall sound for a while and have been going back and forth between a JCM 800 and a Silver Jubilee. Then a few weeks ago I saw Victory posting about their new Sheriff amps, which led to me reading and learning more about the company. Next thing you know, I have a last-gen Sheriff sitting here. What a great little amp, everything about it is just classy. From the smooth turning pots to the bias option on the back, it's just fantastic. Here's a couple pics and a quick riffing video with it I recorded earlier this evening.

View attachment 4719


Holy crap!!! I dig it!!! 🍻
 
I tried one of these last week. I thought it was a bit dark, but every clip I hear sounds bright and open. Maybe the one I tried had a problem. I love the size and features of this amp.
 
I tried one of these last week. I thought it was a bit dark, but every clip I hear sounds bright and open. Maybe the one I tried had a problem. I love the size and features of this amp.
I get that, for what I'm doing it's boosted, so I am adding a bit of push, treble, and mids with the SD1 for sure. It has a very open sound, not sure I'd call it dark, but slamming the front-end of it with an overdrive definitely gets it into more modern territory.
 
I'm not finding anything in the manual or online with the tube layout for this amp. So I'll throw this up here for anyone looking for this in the future. Based on this pic of the inside of the Sheriff 44, below is a usable tube layout for the amp simply created in MS Paint. I wanted to make sure it was up on the internet somewhere.

Vic sheriff 44 innards.png



VICTORY SHERIFF 44 TUBE LAYOUT.jpg


Hopefully this is useful to someone in the future.
 
Yeah, I have been among the folks who have eyed those amps with some interest as well, being a huge modded Marshall fan combined with the fact the Mr. Cornford himself Martin Kidd is the Victory guy, IIRC.

The MK50H borders on being my all-time FAS amp model which has always made me wanna check out one IRL... that said, I've heard the V's differ significantly from the Cornford designs...

Anyway I do have a Kraken V4 preamp and the 'Marshall' channel on that is pretty sweet.
 
Yeah, I have been among the folks who have eyed those amps with some interest as well, being a huge modded Marshall fan combined with the fact the Mr. Cornford himself Martin Kidd is the Victory guy, IIRC.

The MK50H borders on being my all-time FAS amp model which has always made me wanna check out one IRL... that said, I've heard the V's differ significantly from the Cornford designs...

Anyway I do have a Kraken V4 preamp and the 'Marshall' channel on that is pretty sweet.
That is super interesting to learn, I had no idea. I really do like the Sheriff, especially with an SD1 out front. I also picked up a V2 Hot Mod for it this week and it really adds something to the amp as well.
 
Here are couple pics with the hot mod installed:

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I don't have any clips or videos to share with this yet as I'm still learning how to best utilize the hot mod with the amp. It's an absolute joy to mess with gain staging like this. I have a tubescreamer and a SD1 out front, I have two gain modes on the hot mod, and I have the plexi and the JCM800 channels on the amp itself to play with along with the more vintage Cathode or more modern Fixed bias modes. It's a little overwhelming with all the options, but it is fun for sure.

I'm finding the cathode mode to be more mid-focused and vintage sounding, while the fixed mode tightens up nicely. I like the lower gain stage on the hot mod with the plexi channel. On the higher gain JCM800-like channel, running the hot mod in lower gain mode with an overdrive out front gets super saturated, or just running the hot mod in higher gain mode without a boost sounds heavy, dark, and gritty, which is great too.
 
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