Steve Morse of Dixie Dregs, Deep Purple – My Magic Bullet

Since you clicked on this article, I’m guessing you know who Steve Morse is. You probably know his amazingly innovative guitar playing. You likely know about his long career with the Dixie Dregs, his 28 years with Deep Purple, and his playing with Kansas, Flying Colors, and the Steve Morse Band. You may know he was voted “Best Overall Guitarist” in the Guitar Player Readers’ Poll for five consecutive years. You might know about his signature Ernie Ball Music Man guitar and his ENGL Signature E656 amp.

Morse first came on my radar when I was a student at Belmont College (now Belmont University) and a friend played me a demo he had recorded with a young group of unknowns called the Dixie Dregs. He threaded up the quarter-inch mix tape on the Ampex 440 tape machine in the control room and hit play. My mind was blown by the musicianship. Wow!  

That was 1978, and I’ve never forgotten it. I’ve followed Morse’s career ever since.

So, I was thrilled when I recently had the chance to meet Morse and chat with him about one of my favorite topics — what I like to call “My Magic Bullet.” These are stories about times in someone’s life when they had an “Aha!” moment and realized they had discovered something that would change their life. I’ve had those moments personally, and lots of musicians have those stories, too. I’ve asked artists, musicians, and engineers and they love telling their stories. I love hearing them.

I asked Morse what gear inspired him, changed him, or sort of opened his eyes as a guitar player. He pinpointed it — when he was just a teenager, he heard two guitar players using the same effect. I’ll let him take it from here.

On Finding His Sound

Fuston: Was there a moment or a piece of gear that changed everything for you as a player? 

Steve: For me, it was back in the late ’60s. This was at a huge pop festival in Atlanta. I was in the front row of about 300,000 people, and Spirit was playing. (Steve was 15 at the 1969 Atlanta International Pop Festival and had been playing guitar for four years.)

Spirit began their set with Randy California using the feedback of, you know, too much regeneration on a Echoplex, and there’s that feedback. Then he’d move the playback head closer to the record head, and it’d go [makes the sound of feedback speeding up], and it sounded like an alien spaceship taking off or something. And that’s how they began their show.

So, I was sitting there watching, thinking how did he do that? Then later that year, I was watching Jimmy Page do the same thing when he was playing with his bow — his violin bow tricks with the Echoplex.

Those were more for effects. So, when I got my first Echoplex, I hooked it up, and it was making a bunch of hiss through my amp. I was going, well, it’s cool, but I don’t like the way it’s changing the sound. And I don’t like the hiss.

So, what did you do?

I came up with this idea. I’d been trying to play steel guitar, pedal steel. Back then, I had a cable-operated pedal steel made by Fender that I traded for — uh, I’m not even going to say what I traded for it because the thing I traded is worth a fortune now. As usual.

We’ve all got those stories.

It’s in my book titled Buy High, Sell Low. (Laughter all around.) Okay, so anyway...

Was it an instrument that you traded? 

Yes, it was. It was a six-string instrument. I’ll say it right off the bat — I’m not a collector.

Anyway, so I said, what can I do to get rid of this hiss but still use this thing? I had a volume pedal, and on the Echoplex, you could turn up the delay to where, at least on my Maestro Echoplex, you could turn it up to where there was nothing but delay.

I said, well, you know, I don’t need much of the delay. I just need some. I thought, “Why don’t I put it through another amp? And then I can use the volume pedal to introduce it when I want it.” So, I put that through another amp.

We were playing some of the music from the Dregs in the early ’70s, you know, right around the same time that I was discovering a better way to use the Echoplex.

And when I put the delay only through the second amp, I discovered I could turn down the treble a little bit on the second amp and still get the effect of the echo but without the hiss. So, suddenly my hiss problem was gone.

I’d lift up the volume pedal, and there’s nothing coming out of the second amp — no hiss, no nothing — because it’s being throttled by the volume pedal.

So, the volume pedal was after the Echoplex before the amp?

Yes. And so now I could be playing in these little clubs where there wasn’t really a sound system. It was just the band playing. And I separated the second amp by some distance, on the other side of the drums.

And when I’d step on the pedal, all of a sudden, the room opened up because when I put it on a short delay, it sounded like a doubled instrument, but it had a capstan that was just a little bit off or something, or maybe the drag of the tape was varying slightly. So, there’s a little bit of modulation in there, too.

And that became my thing — where I can expand the sound, make it grow without changing the original sound.

The dry amp sound was still the same, and there was no intermodulation distortion or anything like that.

And that became my sound. You know, later on, I got a Lexicon digital delay to do the same thing, you know, only better. And now it’s down to a little foot pedal, you know, the Flashback with my TonePrint.

I’d say that’s the one piece of gear that enabled me to, you know, when I play fast, turn it down, turn off the delay. And when you hit that last note, turn it on and let it soar.

I use it for chords. I use it especially for clean parts where you’re playing a melodic thing. It gives it some air, and it lets the music breathe.

So, that’s basically my thing. The wet/dry as I discovered it.

The Pat Metheny Story

[Note: Morse and Metheny were both the same age and at University of Miami at the same time, during a one-year period, with a handful of other amazing players whose names you may recognize, including Narada Michael Walden, Hiram Bullock, and Will Lee.1]

Pat Metheny was asking me if I wanted to buy one of his digital delays that he was no longer using. We were doing a gig somewhere. This is a way long time ago.

And I said, yeah, let me check it out. What don’t you like about it? He told me it messed with the sound. I told him to try hooking it up the way I do.

And the next thing you know, Pat loved it.

He loved getting the delay out of different sources. So, he was using several amps with different delays because, you know, his sound was huge. Pat’s playing combined with the multiple sources of ambience onstage made an unforgettable sound.

And that’s the Pat thing. Fascinating. On the Maestro, was it like the original where you moved the heads to change the delay time?

Yeah, but mine was solid-state — it just didn’t have tubes.

Putting the heads as close as possible gave you a nice, a little bit shorter delay like, you know, John Lennon’s vocals often had.

Just like a tape slap.

A little shorter than that, but, anyway, that became my signature thing, and it drove sound men crazy and drove me crazy when the sound man didn’t get the two amps balanced.

Steve Morse’s Magic Bullet

There you have it. What “Aha!” moment changed your playing or your career? Was it a performance, a recording, or a piece of gear? Or are you still looking for your own magic bullet? Keep trying new things and talking to other musicians. There’s a magic bullet out there for you, too.

Footnotes:

1 Source: https://www.joness.com/gr300/metheny.htm 
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