clean drive pedal JHS

clean drive pedal JHSWe 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

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.

SPEC­I­FI­CA­TIONS

• ±9V Dual Sup­ply (mas­sive head­room) 
• Top-mount­ed jacks 
• 9V DC Cen­ter Neg­a­tive
• Silent Buffered Bypass Switching
• THIS PEDAL MEASURES 2.6” X 4.8” X 1.6” AND CONSUMES 60mA. DO NOT USE MORE THAN 9VDC. DAMAGE MAY OCCUR AND YOUR WARRANTY WILL BE VOIDED.