Victory Amps has started 2026 strong with the launch of its all-new flagship lunchbox head, the MKX, a compact 50-watter inspired by the British guitar amp company’s MK Overdrive – but, crucially, without the five-grand price tag.
The MKX is also a lot more portable, scaling down the MK Overdrive into the accessible lunchbox format that Victory has made a specialty of under chief designer Martin Kidd.
When the MK Overdrive was launched in January 2024, it was described as Kidd’s “ultimate overdrive amplifier,” with a clean channel that was every bit as compelling as the drive channel. But at $5,699/£5,099 street, it was not for everyone. The MKX? Well, Victory says the MKX “captures the heart and soul of the MK Overdrive” and it does so at a very competitive price point.
Kidd says there haven't been any sacrifices in the design. There's a lot going on here. For $1,699/£1,399, you get a tube amp that's hand-built in the UK, with three channels – Clean, OD1, and OD1 – and a heap of features that bely its modest size, including two reverbs, both with level and decay controls, two master volumes, power scaling that toggles between the full 50-watt operation and 9-watts, and this being 2026, there is the all-important effects loop for incorporating your pedalboard.
And it ships with two footswitches. The channels, reverb and master volumes are footswitchable. The clean and overdrive channels are served by their own independent EQ and level controls.
The Clean channel can give you a pristine glassy chime “ideal for everything from funky chord work, jazz standards” and that kind of thing, and takes you up to the edge-of-breakup blues guitar tones where those oblique and double-stop bends sound that bit hotter.
The OD1 is “classic crunch” while OD2 dials up the saturation for leads, and, should the mood take you, heavier fare – drop-tuned riffs, the rough-and-tumble of metal guitar, and so on, so forth…
As for the reverbs, you've got the choice of a vintage spring-style reverb or the more contemporary reverb as heard on The Deputy.
Under the hood, the MKX ships with a trio of ECC83 preamp tubes and a pair of EL34 power tubes. There are global Presence and Resonance controls on the back of the amp, alongside outputs for 4, 8, 16-ohm speaker cabinets.
All in, this weighs just 7.15kg, and there are 1x12 and 2x12 cabinets loaded with Celestion Vintage 30 speakers to go with it.
If portability is your chief concern, there is also the matching MKX LB 112 cabinet, which is purpose built for lunchbox amplifiers and houses a single Celestion Seventy 80 12” driver. It weighs in at just 8.8kg.
The MKX is available now, priced £1,399/$1,699 street.
See Victory Amps for more details.
