“This is the best we’ve ever built. Period”: JHS Pedals says it has just made the ultimate first-stage overdrive pedal – and the inspiration came from a bona fide jazz legend

JHS Pedals has rolled out the Morning Glory Clean – an updated overdrive pedal that puts a small-but-mighty twist on the company's hugely popular transparent overdrive platform.

On the surface, it sure looks familiar, sharing much of the design DNA of its namesake in the Kansas-based guitar effects company’s catalog.

But it is a very different take on the much-celebrated transparent overdrive – and the idea came to JHS Pedals supremo Josh Scott when he was watching contemporary jazz guitar maestro Julian Lage at work.

Like many players, Scott was inspired watching Lage doing his thing – only in this instance, it was Lage’s soundcheck that was blowing Scott’s mind.

“I watched Ju­lian Lage dial in his tone at a sound­check in Chica­go. Vin­ta­ge Fen­der amp. Collings semi-hol­low gui­tar,” writes Scott on the JHS Pedals website. “He ad­just­ed pickup heights, moved po­si­tions on stage, chas­ing the per­fect bal­ance. It was cap­ti­vat­ing.”

Over the years JHS Pedals has unveiled four different versions of the Morning Glory. It’s the stompbox that made 'em famous, its transparent drive so versatile, so useful, that this little block o’ gold has been a ubiquitous presence on pedalboards the world over – Lage’s included.

“He's a big rea­son it end­ed up on jazz ped­al­boards world­wide,” says Scott.

Scott spoke with Lage, asking him what he looked for in an overdrive, and that got his mind racing. The Morning Glory could be reinvented once more.

Version 4, which is still in the JHS Pedals catalog, doubled the headroom, added a Gain toggle switch, and made the Morning Glory compatible with its Red Remote system.

The Morning Glory Clean, meanwhile, is a very different beast, pairing a “studio-grade” parallel clean gain stage with the drive to make what JHS Pedals describes as the best first-stage overdrive it has ever built.

Circuit-wise, this is more than a mod. It really is a two-hander between clean gain and the pedal’s drive.

Oftentimes, we see “clean” knobs that are really just mix knobs, a helpful way of preserving some of your original electric guitar signal in the mix, and ergo find nice textures that way, but this Clean knob is a dual-gang pot that scales clean gain hand-in-hand with drive.

The idea is that you get the best of both worlds; you get the drive adding compression, making your signal more harmonically flamboyant, i.e. the good stuff that happens when you turn up the drive.

But you also use that Clean control to preserve the nuances of your guitar’s signal, the low-end, the authority of your pick attack, and all of that, and JHS Pedals says it is a way for getting those studio-style clean sounds that were recorded at truly anti-social volumes in recording studios.

When Transparent Overdrive Isn't Enough - The Morning Glory Clean! - YouTube

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There are all kinds of uses for the Morning Glory Clean. “Stack a dis­tor­tion in front and the sus­tain opens up in­stead of clos­ing off. Run it af­ter de­lay for new territories of series/parallel textures,” says JHS Pedals, adding that it also works a treat with amp modelers – and with bass guitars too.

With all this clean talk, it is gratifying to know that you could run this as a clean boost pedal, too. Alternatively, turn the Clean dial fully counterclockwise and it behaves like an O.G. Morning Glory (this has the same voluminous headroom as V4). JHS Pedals suggests cranking the Drive control then using the Clean as a balance.

Feed it 9V DC from a pedalboard power supply and you are good to go. Its yours for $179. See JHS Pedals for more.