What is the JHS Morning Glory?

The Morning Glory is the flagship of JHS, a guitar pedal company named after its leader, Josh Scott, obsessive pedal collector who started out by modifying certain pedals for himself and friends and has since risen to fame within the guitar community for his pleasant aesthetic and ethos. You can find Scott all over YouTube espousing his opinions about (nearly) any pedal in existence and often creating insatiable demand (and absurd prices on the used market) for pedals theretofore unknown. Of his many designs, the Morning Glory has stood out over the JHS’s history as a mainstay in mainstream guitar culture for its transparent and dynamic responsiveness, its attractive and robust build, and its general availability new and used.

Here at Humbucker Soup, we ran one through its paces using a Stratocaster, a Les Paul, and a Telecaster into a silver face Fender amp. We found that its impressive dynamic range and harmonic saturation make it a fine option for an always on sound, a boost, or a medium to high gain solo tool.

Morning Glory Layout and Design

There have been four different versions of the Morning Glory, the first of which was a spin on the Marshall Bluesbreaker, a low gain rock and roll tool that didn’t color the signal in the way the ubiquitous TubeScreamer did. Scott wanted his spinoff to have more available volume and gain, but retain the transparency of the Bluesbreaker. In doing so, his first version of the Morning Glory was born. Since, there have been slight modifications, but the original intent remains. The V4, which is what we tested, now has even more volume and gain on tap, plus some eq controls and a secondary gain stage that can be accessed through toggle or remote switch and thereby become a dual drive in one. The eq switch on the side is a bright cut intended to “tame high end on brighter rigs”. When playing, I tend to prefer bright so I mostly left the switch off.

The volume and gain controls are intuitive and there is, in fact, quite a lot of headroom available. The tone knob functions like a guitar’s tone knob and rolls off high end frequency. Whether playing single coils or hum buckers, the Morning Glory shines with volume at noon and the drive and tone knob at 2 o’clock, allowing for the amount of gain to be controlled by pick attack and volume knob. This type of circuit does what a few other drives in this family aim to do: add more of what your guitar is doing without coloring it with artificial sounding saturation or eq. The Morning Glory does this well, making it an excellent always on, edge of breakup setting.

The second gain stage via toggle switch extends past the low gain, transparent saturation and goes into medium to high gain territory. While this mode wouldn’t work particularly well as an always on setting, it works exceptionally well as a solo boost and with a remote jack for a relay switch, it’s designed to be able to do exactly that in a live setting. Overall, the layout is attractive, feels sturdy and intuitive. That, and its design set the Morning Glory up to be a great option for many styles of playing and would be a sound choice for the only overdrive on a player’s board.

Conclusion

JHS has managed to eke out a formidable place in the ever more crowded landscape of “independent” pedal makers and at this point is as mainstream as nearly any other. This is due in no small part to Scott’s everyman persona as the older brother/teacher on the internet who seems to genuinely love all guitar pedals and wants us to as well, whether they are his own inventions or obscure pawnshop finds from Korea. The Morning Glory is a testament to his love of pedals, as it’s a loving adaptation of the Bluesbreaker, a pedal that he and his friends all really used.

The morning glory can go from very clean boost to edge of breakup or from edge of break up to searing solo with the flip of a switch. Scott’s penchant for design is on display with the Morning Glory’s attractive gold powder coating and sturdy casing. In true democratic fashion, the Morning Glory is mass produced and the used market is healthy, making them affordable and plentiful. As such, it’s an excellent pedal and would serve any guitarist looking for a transparent Bluesbreaker style pedal with more gas in the tank if so desired.