Since the inception of Pedal of the Day, Josh Scott and JHS Pedals have been on board, sending us pedals to review and demo over the last 7+ years. Somehow, their most famous pedal, the Morning Glory Overdrive, has never passed through our shop, for whatever reason….until today. Unleashed in collaboration with The Pedal Movie (which is fantastic, if you haven’t seen it), this Morning Glory 2009 Limited Edition Throwback is based on a modded Marshall Bluesbreaker pedal that was one of the first releases JHS did back in the day. 20,000 of these pedals later, and they’re still going strong…
As you can probably tell, the Morning Glory 2009 Throwback is in a bigger-than-usual JHS enclosure. The controls are the same (minus the Bright/Cut switch), and the sound is just as awesome as we thought it would be. For a glimpse into this creation, let’s hear from the man himself:
“In 2006, John Mayer released his album Continuum. This record made me love the guitar in a brand new way. I had never heard such perfectly clean yet delightfully dirty tones; it fascinated me. After digging up information on his rig for this record, I learned that John had used an original 1991 black-box Marshall Bluesbreaker pedal.
I jumped on FleaBay and, within a few weeks, I had a Bluesbreaker on my board and was head-over-heels in love. A year later, I fixed a broken guitar pedal and started modifying BOSS gear; this was the early incarnation JHS Pedals, just called JHS Mods at the time. The first pedals that I modified were mostly mainstream effects – because if you’re going to accidentally destroy a pedal, make it replaceable — but in 2008 I couldn’t resist modding my rare and out-of-production Bluesbreaker to be more powerful and less harsh with certain single-coil pickups. These modifications (and a few other changes) lived secretly on my board for another year.
By this time, I had built a few pedals from scratch, and began to brainstorm how I could create my own original pedals instead of just offering mods. I felt a little bit like Dr. Frankenstein when he actually succeeds in bringing the monster to life; I’d accidentally started a pedal business with no idea where things were headed.
One of the first original designs that I built to sell as a JHS Pedal was the Morning Glory overdrive. It was the original 1991 Bluesbreaker circuit with all of my changes, built from the ground up, set in a white enclosure (bigger than the current models) and hand-stamped by me. Early versions didn’t include the iconic firework symbol, and I only made around one hundred of these V1s; they are impossible to find now. The Morning Glory name was a reference to a type of firework (a roman candle that I played with as a kid), and I liked the comparison. I felt like the Bluesbreaker circuit added the clarity and rounded brightness that was always missing in my sound.
I would have never dreamed that this simple design would change my life – and, more importantly, the lives of so many employees and families here at JHS. Since 2009 we have sold more than twenty thousand Morning Glory overdrives. JHS would be nothing without it.
This is the only pedal that has never left my personal board, and I doubt it ever will. Thanks for buying this limited replication of the original V1 pedal that means a lot to us here at JHS. I hope you enjoy it for years to come!”
-Josh Scott
I mean, what can you say to that? The birth of one of the most recognizable pedal brands in the world – we love a good starter story, as we’re sure you do, and this is a great one, to say the least. Since this was a Limited Edition, they sold out pretty quickly – if you happened to get one, bask in the fact that you’re holding in your hands a piece of pedal history…plus, it sounds great (see demo below). Thanks to Josh and the entire JHS staff for the support over the years – and if you don’t have a Morning Glory currently, just follow this link to snag your very own: JHS Morning Glory V4 Overdrive Guitar Effects Pedal
Cheers!
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