For nearly two decades, the Morning Glory has been JHS Pedals' signature sound. Sixty thousand units sold. Four different revisions. It's based on the Marshall Blues Breaker circuit—a legendary topology that John Mayer made famous after his Continuum album.
Now, Josh Scott is introducing something completely different: the Morning Glory Clean.
It's not a revision. It's a reimagining that adds a true parallel clean blend to the original circuit—giving players their low end and pick attack back without sacrificing that signature overdrive tone.
The Circuit That Started Everything
The Morning Glory's story begins with the Marshall Blues Breaker. This was one of the first truly transparent overdrives ever made. John Mayer's tone helped make it famous. Analog Man's King of Tone is built on this same topology.
What makes the Morning Glory special is what it doesn't do: unlike a Tube Screamer, it doesn't add a mid bump that alters your sound. Instead, it simulates what happens when you push an amp to the edge of breakup—the natural clipping, the compression, the harmonics—without changing your frequency response.
But here's the problem Scott identified: for some players, this transparency comes with tradeoffs. Jazz and country musicians often lose their low end because the Blues Breaker topology rolls off frequencies naturally. And while the smooth, compressed clipping sounds beautiful, you lose something called pick attack—the dynamic response that comes from playing harder.
Why Add a Clean Blend?
The idea seemed counterintuitive at first. "Why would you add a clean blend to an already transparent overdrive?" Scott admits he asked himself the same question. But a soundcheck with jazz guitarist Julian Lodge changed everything.
Lodge is known in the jazz community for his meticulous approach to tone. Watching him work made Scott wonder: what if we could give players more low end and better pick attack without altering what makes the Morning Glory special?
The solution is elegant. Instead of modifying the Blues Breaker topology—which would ruin the circuit—Scott added a parallel blend at the output. This lets players add their clean, untouched signal alongside the overdriven one.
Two things happen. First, you get back that pick attack. The compressed, creamy saturation remains, but now your playing dynamics come through. Second, you restore low frequencies that the original topology rolled off. For jazz and country players specifically, this is a game-changer.
How the Controls Work
The pedal has four knobs: Volume at the output, Tone for brightness, Drive controlling how much clipping passes through, and Clean—the new addition.
Turning Clean all the way up puts the pedal in transparent boost mode. It still has significant gain, but no overdrive touches your signal. This is actually a better transparent boost than JHS's own Clone Sick, according to Scott.
The recommended starting point: Drive maxed, Clean in the middle, Tone in the middle. That's what Scott calls "set it and forget it"—the classic Morning Glory tone with clean blended in underneath.
Rolling the Clean knob backward slowly as you play lets you hear how the overdrive sits on top of your clean signal. It's not linear distortion—it's parallel, which means both signals coexist. A bassist can have their crystal-clear treble frequencies alongside their low end, all at once.
Two Ways to Use It
The simplest approach is placing Morning Glory Clean first in your chain as a stage-one overdrive. Your clean guitar signal enters the pedal compressed by whatever comes before it—maybe a compressor—and then both signals blend together into the output.
Alternatively, you can place it later in your chain. Scott demonstrated stacking Morning Glory Clean with a Nautilon clon-style circuit and running both through a second-stage regular Morning Glory. The result is fuller, crisper, more layered tone.
"This is bass player's heaven. This is what every album you've ever heard."
The parallel blend creates that precise, chime-y clarity while preserving low end—something most overdrives destroy.
Bottom Line
After 17 years of refinishment, Scott finally solved the Morning Glory's oldest limitation: the loss of clean articulation and low frequencies. The Clean version isn't a replacement—it's an expansion, giving players in jazz, country, and blues exactly what they've been asking for without touching what made the original legendary.
The execution is elegant. Two signals running in parallel through one knob. No topology changes, no risk of muddy distortion—just better tone that finally answers the criticism every overdrive player has quietly held.