JHS Morning Glory V4 vs MXR Sugar Drive

Aug 19, 2026

Morning Glory vs Sugar Drive puts a Bluesbreaker against a Klon, which is a more interesting pairing than the spec sheets suggest: both live in low gain territory, both get called transparent, and both shape frequencies far more than that word implies. The widget above plays them through the same loop, the same chain and the same room at three gain settings (Light, Medium, Hard), so you can hear what separates them before reading a word about it.

JHS Morning Glory V4

The Morning Glory V4 is a Marshall Bluesbreaker derivative, and it’s pretty opinionated about frequencies. There’s a noticeable mid hump, not as pronounced as a Klon or a Tube Screamer but definitely present, and a significant bass cut baked into the circuit. Josh Scott is a session guitarist, and guitar bass tends to get cut during mixing anyway, so I read that as a deliberate design choice rather than an accident.

The panel runs Volume top-left, Drive top-right and Tone below Drive. A toggle on the left flips between the standard gain mode (LED goes blue) and the high-gain mode (LED goes red), which feels like a second, hotter pedal sharing the enclosure. On the side sits a high-cut switch that trims the top-end edge: subtle, but welcome if your rig is already bright. The Hard setting in the widget leans on both, with Drive at 10, high-gain mode engaged and high cut on.

At moderate Drive it sits in edge of breakup territory, open and dynamic, and the heavy bass cut keeps it from thickening up as you push. What it does best is carve. At lower gain it adds just enough compression and shaping to make a guitar sit in a band mix. The full Morning Glory demo walks through the Drive sweep and both high-cut positions.

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MXR Sugar Drive

The Sugar Drive is a Klon-style circuit in MXR’s compact mini housing, and its character comes from three things working together: a mid push, a bass roll-off, and hard clipping diodes. The Drive knob is a clean/dirt blend rather than a straight gain control, so turning it up layers saturated signal on top of your clean tone instead of replacing it.

Three knobs, and that’s the whole panel: Tone at the top center, Level and Drive below it, Level on the left and Drive on the right. No modes, no voicing options. A side-mounted switch toggles the buffer in bypass, which earns its keep at the front of a long cable run or a high-impedance chain. Inside there’s a voltage doubler that gives the circuit more headroom than a standard 9V supply normally allows, part of why the clean blend stays coherent with Drive maxed out, as it is on the Hard setting here.

My honest take on Klons and clones of Klons is that they all sound pretty much identical and nobody notices the difference in a mix. Listening back to the loop, though, the Sugar Drive has a certain charm: the compression at medium Drive has a nice chewiness, and that’s the most Klon-characteristic zone of the three. There’s more on the Tone sweep in the full Sugar Drive demo.

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Get This One If…

Get the Morning Glory if you need to be heard. The bass cut and mid push are a feature rather than a compromise: in a loud band with a second guitar player, this is the one that stays audible without turning up. Single coils into a clean or slightly dirty amp is the sweet spot, whether as a lead boost or a cutting rhythm overdrive. Humbucker players can make it work, though the bass cut can leave things feeling a little lean.

Get the Sugar Drive if you want the Klon mid push rather than a shaped cut, and would rather have one fixed voice you know inside out than a second gain mode to remember. The mini housing fits a crowded board, the buffer toggle helps on a complex one, and with the Drive low it works as a clean boost with a little mid emphasis in front of an amp.