From JHS: When Trans­par­ent Overdrive Isn't Good Enough 

We took our most legendary overdrive to a new level and redefined what it means to be transparent. Clearer pick attack, improved low end, and more versatile gain stacking. 

This is the ultimate first-stage overdrive pedal. 

It start­ed at sound­check

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

Ju­lian has used a Morn­ing Glo­ry for years — he's a big rea­son it end­ed up on jazz ped­al­boards world­wide. Af­ter the sound­check, we dis­cussed what he looked for in an over­drive. One thing led to an­oth­er. My brain start­ed wan­der­ing off into dif­fer­ent ideas. Could we make the Morning Glory even better? 

The prob­lem with trans­par­ent

When you add over­drive — any type of clip­ping — you lose nu­ance. Pick at­tack gets com­pressed. Dy­na­mics nar­row. All overdrives shape frequency response, even the most transparent.

So we tried some­thing no one's done: we took our Morn­ing Glo­ry (a Blues­breaker-style topol­o­gy) and com­plete­ly re­built it around a stu­dio-grade par­al­lel clean blend. Not just a mod­i­fi­ca­tion, a re­design from the ground up.

On pa­per, it seemed point­less — why blend a clean sig­nal into some­thing al­ready trans­par­ent? 

Here's why. The Morn­ing Glo­ry's magic happens when you turn up the Drive, the circuit boosts higher harmonics and adds soft com­pres­sion. Jan­g­ly. Per­fect in a mix. The par­al­lel clean cir­cuit lets you keep all that while di­al­ing the nat­ur­al low end back in — all the tone, all the char­ac­ter. Noth­ing com­pro­mised.

This isn't a clean knob slapped on a Morn­ing Glo­ry

For those won­der­ing — let's talk about what's ac­tu­al­ly hap­pen­ing in­side.

The Clean con­trol uses a dual-gang po­ten­tiome­ter. As you turn it, clean gain scales pro­por­tion­al­ly with the drive sig­nal — it’s per­fect­ly en­gi­neered from the ground up. Most clean blends are an af­terthought — a sim­ple mix knob tacked onto an ex­isting cir­cuit. This one was de­signed so the two sig­nals track to­geth­er across all gain settings. No vol­ume jumps. No weird phase is­sues. Just seam­less blend­ing from Morn­ing Glo­ry to pure sig­nal and every­thing in-be­tween. 

The pow­er sec­tion runs on a ±9V dual sup­ply — the same topol­o­gy as our V4 — which gives you high­er head­room than the orig­i­nal V1 cir­cuit and any oth­er Bluesbreak­er-style ped­al out there. This is where most clones get it wrong. Think of it as the orig­i­nal Ver­sion 1 Morn­ing Glo­ry voic­ing with the V4 en­gi­neer­ing en­hance­ments. 

The Tone con­trol af­fects only the over­drive path. Your clean sig­nal stays par­al­lel and un­touched. For the peo­ple who care about this stuff: this is the most thought-out and so­phis­ticat­ed Morn­ing Glo­ry we've ever built. 

End­less head­room, Any vol­ume

End­less head­room. Those mas­sive clean gui­tar sounds that you love on record­ings — most were made at vol­umes that would get you evict­ed. The Morn­ing Glo­ry Clean gives you the stiff­ness and au­thor­i­ty of a high-wattage amp at the edge of breakup — with­out the earplugs. 

Think of the Clean con­trol as adding back in wattage, clar­i­ty, and punch.

It goes on every­thing

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. First-stage over­drive? This is the best we've ever built. Pe­riod.

It breathes in front of amp mod­el­ers too. The over­drive and pres­ence of the classic Morn­ing Glo­ry, with your at­tack and low-end con­tent di­aled back in — magic in front of a Kem­per, Quad Cor­tex, UAD, or He­lix. 

Bass play­ers: the orig­i­nal Morn­ing Glo­ry rolls off low end just like a fi­nal mix. That's why you love it — that's why it's be­come a stan­dard on so many pro bassists' boards. The clean blend di­als that low end back on com­mand for your dif­fer­ent bass and ampli­fi­er needs. This might be the best bass over­drive we've ever made.

Who this isn't for

This ped­al isn't for every­one and we're con­fi­dent in say­ing that. If you want the dopamine hit of a wild new sound, look else­where. If you want tons of con­trols, tweaka­bil­i­ty, bells and whis­tles — this is not that. This ped­al does less while giv­ing you more. No bad sounds. Im­me­dia­te gra­ti­fi­ca­tion. Leave it on and for­get it's there.

CON­TROLS

Vol­ume — Adjusts the overall volume in conjunction with the drive and clean.   

Clean — Full left: orig­i­nal Morn­ing Glo­ry. Full right: pure clean sig­nal. Start with Clean and Drive maxed, dial Clean back (counter clockwise) un­til you find your perfect bal­ance. 

Drive — Sat­u­ra­tion. Crank it and use the Clean con­trol as your bal­ance. This ped­al is de­signed to be used this way. 

Tone — Clas­sic Morn­ing Glo­ry tone stack. Af­fects only the drive path. Back for warmth, for­ward for clar­i­ty. 

Clean Boost Pro Tip – Morning Glory Clean can be used as a stand-alone clean boost.  Set the Clean to 100% (fully clockwise) and  increase the Drive.  In this configuration, the Drive will not produce any overdrive clipping - only clean volume boosting.