Steve Morse Unveils His Deep Purple Rig

In addition to his illustrious history with the Dixie Dregs, guitar maestro Steve Morse still has a successful solo career in addition to being a new, permanent member of Deep Purple. Morse appears on the band's latest set, Purpendicular, and is currently on the road, winning fans everywhere via the combination of his legendary fretboard athletics with Purp's awesome catalog of classic metal. A lethal combination, indeed.

Did your gear go through a lot of changes for the Purple sessions?

Well, the main thing was that I used a totally different amp. I used a Peavey 5150 head with their Scorpion speakers. My delay is going through a VTM head, which is just a basic tube amp to return the delays through. Then that goes through a different type of cabinet that has Black Widow speakers.

What was the reason for the amp change?

Blending with the organ. Jon Lord uses a Hammond/Leslie combination, and when you mike that, you get a lot of midrange. So, when I tried my regular sound, it didn't blend as well because it was more midrangey than the 5150 I tried. I did some guitar seminars, and I used whatever amps they had. The 5150 worked pretty well for that. I knew it naturally had more top and bottom than I normally would use on my own sound, but thought it would help blend with the Leslie to get a little bit more of that Machine Head-type sound. I think it was one of my Peavey cabinets and Marshall 2550 head.

What other things changed for the Purple sessions?

I got a Lexicon PCM 80, which is an expensive, but very nice sounding reverb. We do one acoustic intro on the album when Roger [Glover] plays one part and I play the other part on these acoustic/electrics. My guitar is a super slim-line acoustic/electric that Peavey makes. That goes into the PCM 80 and then out into the power amps of each tube head. One side goes into the dry and one goes into the wet, so they both become a stereo amplifier. This was my bright idea! When you plug piezo-pickup guitars into a board, you get a super, ultra, full-range high-end. When you compare that with the sound that later follows it after you stop playing acoustic, it sounds dull in comparison. I have my roadie pull the plug at the appropriate second, and that brings it back to the amplifier I'm playing through. I think we bring it in through the effects return, so when you pull that, it breaks the bypass and the front end is allowed to go back to the power amp. It allows us to make sure levels are balanced and there's not too drastically different a sound. It works out really well because here are these rock 'n' roll tube amps sounding nice, which of course, any amp will do as long as you don't go through the front end. I turned Pat Metheny onto the idea of putting the delay through a second amp and splitting the sound.

Any other effects you're using with Purple?

I still like that DigiTech GSP-21. It has some presets that I actually put on there. It's hard to find now, possibly because it was small, reliable, and worked well-they had to take it off the market! I wrote two presets that I use. I think they put the presets in the GSP-2101.

When I first checked out the unit, I couldn't really find any settings that I would use. I sent it back and I thought that was the end of it. A guy called back and wanted to know why it wasn't useful. I told him I don't like delay without any modulation. We talked about it and later he changed part of a chorus to modulate the delay.

Can you elaborate on your theory of modulation?

If you have an oscillator changing the length of the delay time slightly, and let's say you're looking at a delay of 300 milliseconds, you go smoothly from 290 to 300 to 310. The numbers are exaggerated for illustration. While it's getting longer in delay time, the pitch of the echoes are going down and, while it's shortening the delay time, the pitch of the echoes is going up a little higher than your original instrument pitch. If you blend a small amount of that at a nice, slow speed, you'll get a nice air of ambience. Sustained notes have a subtle but noticeable vibrato in them. It makes it a lot more interesting to me.

When did you start implementing this approach?

Ever since the days of the Echoplex, when you could put a piece of tape on the capstan and eventually, where the piece of tape wraps over itself, you would create a slightly thicker place there. In the process, you'd be changing the speed of the tape slightly. The reason that was done was if you ran any high end on the front end of your amp, the Echoplex would just hiss. The one way around that was to plug the guitar into an amp that was modified with an effects send or preamp out. That was a big modification in those days-not many people could do that. The other alternative was to "Y" the guitar, which I hated to do. The third alternative was to make a buffer amp that split. One way or another, you'd go into the amp and send a useable signal, like from a preamp out to the Echoplex. Then, you'd send the output of the Echoplex, which was on full wet, to second amplifier and turn down the treble. You still get the delay as much as you needed, but the fact that it didn't have as much high end was not as noticeable. You got a much cleaner sound, though. That way, you could run that delay signal through a volume pedal. Now you have a cleaner delay coming from a second source, which means it doesn't distort your amp with two signals at once, plus, you can control the amount of delay with your foot pedal. You can use a ton of delay just to add onto a note that's trailing off. You can add onto it just by pressing down the volume pedal, and it doesn't become noticeable that you're using a ton of delay because you're not using it on the attacks of the notes.

Any other stage-effects applications?

I have a bunch of Ernie Ball volume pedals. There's this one section when I play a little rhythm part and I alternate using either a modified Lexicon PCM 42 with extra memory for the repeat hold or a [Lexicon] JamMan. The JamMan works great, as far as putting a loop in of any length. It doesn't allow you to layer the loops as seamlessly from one to another as a regular delay would.

Can you give some examples on the Purple record where you used a volume pedal?

The opening track, "Ted The Mechanic," features two amps pretty much split with 15 milliseconds of delay. The PCM 41 is my short delay, normally. It's got sine-wave modulation, of course. It's a lightly modulated, very short delay which gives it that breadth of stereo sound. In fact, if you listen to those old stereo BOSS chorus pedals, you'll see that one side is straight and the other side modulates the pitch. It sounds gigantic when you put it through two amps, because when you one signal straight on one side of the room and another signal modulated in pitch, what you get is a huge movement of air, and it seems to almost pan a little bit. The harmonics on "Loosen My Strings" are the short delay mixed with a long delay, the preset from the DigiTech GSP-21. Both delays go through one amp and the straight signal comes through the 5150.

Tell us about the genesis of your guitar collection.

My first good guitar was a Stratocaster. It played great, but I couldn't get any of the big, fat, midrangey Led Zeppelin sounds. So, I got a Vox Super Beatle amp hooked up with a preamp I'd made from a tape recorder, to get distortion. It had this one feature called Middle Range Boost that you could operate with a footswitch that would change it from a Fender to a Gibson. It boosted the midrange so much! I was tied to that amp. When I played through other people's amps, it still sounded like a Fender. The time came when I had the opportunity to get another guitar, and I got a Telecaster. It looked like a big block of wood-easy to work on! The one I selected had a regular Tele pickup in it and was modified for a humbucker in the neck position. That worked great, but the Tele pickup and the bridge itself were a problem. The Tele pickup would feed back at high, rock 'n' roll-type gain levels. I put the original neck bar [single coil] pickup next to the bridge humbucking pickup. I used a 120-volt on/off switch and made a little plate to mount it on. I made some different pickup combinations with that on/off switch.

So the guitar had the Telecaster bridge, the bar pickup, and the other humbucker, then the Strat pickup in the middle. Also, the bridge was two strings on one saddle. So, I put a Tune-O-Matic bridge on it and replaced the Tele pickup with a Fender humbucker when they first came out. I liked the sound, but it would do some feeding back at high volumes. When I met Steve Blucher from DiMarzio, he convinced me that they could fix up the pickup. They tried to get the feedback out, but they couldn't quite do it, because it was really a design problem. They did make a bunch of experimental prototype pickups, one of which I really liked, and that became the Steve Morse Model pickup. It was a bridge-only pickup. Eventually, they said, "Well why don't we try to make a neck model?" I said, "I kind of like this Gibson on this guitar, but I do wish it had a little bit more high end." So, the next thing you know, we went through a bunch of prototypes of different windings and magnets that Steve came up with. Finally, we came up with a neck pickup, and, oddly enough, it was called the Steve Morse Model. Those became the pickups I used on the blonde Tele which had a '60s Strat neck, I bought new. It was originally black, but I refinished it.

I had that guitar refretted a bunch of times, and the neck kept getting thinner and thinner, and flatter and flatter. Pretty soon it was unrecognizable playing wise. Another fret job would take off the rest of the rosewood. So the guys at Ernie Ball said they'd make a guitar until I liked it, or they'd throw it in the trash. This became the Steve Morse Model. There were a lot of prototypes, nut I got the first one off the production line. Since then, I've gotten four or five others. It's like a Tele, but I didn't want the sanded-down parts where your elbow goes. I didn't like that. It's supposed to be the shape of a Telecaster with the horns of a Strat. It's made out of poplar. Light wood gives you a lot more vibrant feel, a more percussive attack when you clean up the guitar. It's a very smooth transition from distortion to clean. It's all I used on the Purple sessions. The guitar has 22 frets-one more than a Fender. The reason I didn't go to 24 is that it pushes the neck pickup into the wrong location. It really needs to be where it is to get the big difference in sound and to keep from sounding out-of-phase when you combine the two humbuckers. On my guitar, the two humbuckers put together is a very neutral, easy-to-use sound without any real weird characteristics.

How do you use the tone control as a musical part of the pickup?

On the bridge humbucking pickup, play a note with the tone control completely off. Right after you strike the note, roll the tone control on and you get the sound of a Mutron III envelope follower or even a subtle wah-wah. I used that on some of the melodies on "Eyes Of A Child" on my album Stressfest.

Can you use the volume control as an effect as well?

The volume control will act like a tone control up to a certain point. If you're overloading the front end of an amp and you turn the volume down from 10 to 7, you've got a different sound, but you haven't gotten any less volume. The amplifier is still compressing a little bit; it's not distorting much because you've reduced the gain on the front end. Until the front end gets the gain reduced enough to stop overloading, it's not going to turn down the volume. You can still keep distortion while you're doing rhythm stuff, but you have more clarity by turning down your guitar volume.

You manage to harness a lot of gain in your amp without getting muddy in those really intricate passages. How's that done?

There are two reasons for that. To get the impact of the notes, I prefer speakers that will give me impact rather than a tearing distortion sound. Generally, that means speakers with stronger paper and more magnets than you'd find in ones people are generally after, like Celestion vintage speakers. Those actually don't work for me. JBLs or anything with a lot of mass in the magnet work. You have to start with big coils and big magnets. I always use 12s. I also use closed-backed cabinets to get the punch even on the low notes. The other thing is, I pick every note. I'm absolutely muting the other strings that I'm not playing. I make a bridge between my pinky finger and the heel of my hand, and I'm always picking in the middle of that bridge, where there's an opening. I can have a ton of gain, but it sounds clean because I'm striking every note and getting the impact of every note, making sure the other strings aren't ringing.

How do you use your pickups-that is, for which parts?

Usually, I use the neck position for parts that are higher in pitch, and the bridge position for the lower notes. I adjust my guitar's volume, pickups, and tone all the time, right in the middle of a run or a solo.

What about guitarists who have combo amps? Should they try different speaker cabinets?

Try taking the connectors that connect on the speakers and make an adapter that goes to a ¼" plug and try it through a closed-back cabinet. It'll sound totally different. [make sure the impedance of the speakers of the closed-back cabinet matches the impedance of your amp's internal speakers.-Ed. ] You might find that you like it. I recommend the Scorpion speakers for a good overall sound, though Peavey's going to use their Sheffields on a lot of their combos now. I'm in a position to get any kind of speakers I can dream up, and the Scorpions are the ones I ask for. On the closed-back cabinets, they even sound better if I wire them all in series. One speaker gets the full brunt of the signal, but not really, because it's alternating currents. In order for the signal to get passed on, it has to go through the coils of each speaker. The coil's a very fine wire, and maybe that somehow changes the sound.

We did an experiment in the studio. We had 16-ohm speakers wired in parallel to get 4 ohms and then we had 4-ohm speakers all wired in series to get 16 ohms. The ones that sounded the best were the 4-ohm in series. We adjusted the amp in each case to match it. What happened was, the first ones we got were accidentally set at 4 ohms, so we had to wire them in series. It turned out that's a pretty good combination.

Tone Tips
of the Rich & Famous
By Pete Prown

Steve Morse

"A lot of times I go direct, but I tend to go for a lot of presence in my clean tone. I pick every note and I pick it hard so it sort of slaps you in the face. The same with distortion. I use an amp and speaker combination that will make the notes sound almost percussive in their intensity. Like almost anybody who records, I use a lot of effects, but I try to use them in ways that you almost don't notice them; they just add a little electronic air, if you will, especially when I do harmonics."

"Like with effects, I use the guitar synthesizer in a way that you might not know it's there. The high melody on 'Southern Steel' has guitar synth all through it, as do the melodic parts of 'Battle Lines' and the arpeggiated parts of 'Vista Grande.' You get the impression that something is there, but you don't know what it is exactly. I blended a lot of instruments together in the Dregs to get new sounds, but occasionally that offended the band members because they couldn't directly detect their contribution, but it's nice to do that myself because I don't care!

"As opposed to Holdsworth or Metheny, both of whom use the guitar synth right out in the open, my philosophy is to use it as a reinforcement, something to add to the guitar, rather than to replace it. Holdsworth has total control over his sound because he's using the SynthAxe controller, which really isn't a guitar, and Metheny's style is just suited to the guitar synth, but to me, the limitations of the equipment cry out for it to be a background part. I use it live all the time, just for little bits that come in and then are gone. Most people probably don't even realize I'm doing it; they just hear strings come in and then they're gone. In the studio, it's just as easy, if not easier, to just do the part on keyboards. I don't think that the limited-technology excuse is the reason guitar synth isn't as popular as standard guitar, because the guitar itself has its own limits. I think it would become bigger in the rock world if it became more fashionable, because the expression is already there. All it needs is someone to make it big, like an Eddie Van Halen of the guitar synthesizer."