Wandering around the NAMM 2026 hall, we headed over to the Ernie Ball booth to see what was going on. And you’ll never guess who we ran into: our good friend Steve Morse!
We got to sit down with Steve to talk about his affiliation with Ernie Ball, his hurdles with guitar playing, and the modern guitar players struggle. We loved the interview so much, we thought you would too — so we recorded it! Watch the AMS Steve Morse interview, now on the AMS YouTube channel.
Just Warming Up
Steve Morse is a big fan of staying ready so you don't have to get ready! Warming up through as many stages as possible is mandatory, especially for Steve! “You have to work your hands out like it’s calisthenics, but at my age it’s more of a tai chi than a karate workout.”
Morse says temperature is actually part of the warmup process. He says, “If I am chatting with someone and doing a mini interview, in like a hallway, I am doing little exercises to keep my hands busy.”
Practice makes perfect! But what you practice and how you play are not the same thing. “When we practice, we don't say ‘that's how we are going to play.’ A basketball player doesn’t get the ball in a game and start running laps around the court.” Steve describes how a basketball player runs laps to build endurance, like a musician should be doing when they practice. It’s not just rehearsing the song; it’s about getting better, stronger, and faster! “Practicing technique and how you play are two very different things.”
The Modern Guitarist
Steve Morse wants the younger generation to get out there and jam together! He says, “I grew up in a time when you started a band, you were in a room of people saying ‘what was that do that again’ and trying to build something from the pieces you found along the way improvising and making stuff up. It seems like it wasn’t always a song but just a cool sound that couldn’t have been possible if other musicians weren’t in the room to make it together. The greatest defeat was sounding like someone else at a gig or a battle of the bands, and it’s totally different now.”
Back in the day you had so little to make a song — just a couple of friends smashing ideas together. But now the world of music is at your fingertips with ideas and concepts galore! Morse continued, “Back then, I would make 25 cents at a coffee house, but now the young kids have better resources but much less availability to what the real music maker is, which is people coming together making something unique with an opportunity, a laboratory to try out your ideas… Now it's all solo artists and DJs.”
Don’t Be Mad
Steve has arthritis, and while it affects him deeply, he tries not to be the bad guy! “This must be so frustrating to a young guitar player seeing this: an old guy complaining about how hard it is to play and taking up all the gigs you could have!”
Steve tries to preface that he’s just doing his own thing. He isn’t stealing gigs from the youth; he has his own sound and he stays in his lane. “The reason I want to keep playing is because it really is a part of me… The arthritis thing is huge. I tried every treatment I could find. I have a trip 1,000 miles away to try something new to help it. I changed everything: my technique, my picking pattern.”
Morse has tried it all, and not playing just isn’t an option. It would be harder to fail and give up than it would be to keep going and find new ways to play.
Though he keeps his head up, he does have wavering thoughts from time to time. “I thought at one point ‘dude you're done.’ But I remember this band I saw when I was a kid named Hydra, and the bass player didn’t have a hand! Jeff Healey is blind. He can’t see it, but he can feel it.” The moral of the story is that humans adapt!
Steve also learned a lot on the farm from the animals and even the ants. “The persistence of animals count. They keep on and on but they never stop… Don’t give up while you still have a breath.”
The Importance of Hobbies
Oh yes, I mentioned Steve Morse had a farm! Steve keeps very busy. When he isn’t shredding on frets, he’s flying planes and tending to animals.
When asked about his nonmusical influences, Steve said, “Guys who weight train. They might lift for a few hours, but the rest of the day they are recovering. He is getting the nutrients back to do it again. From my mind, doing normal stuff and concentrating on cause and effect and focusing on things I can have influence over is what recharges the playing muscles in my brain. It’s an important balance. The more normal stuff you do, the more music is like a welcome place to go and enjoy.”
Ernie Ball Steve Morse Guitar
Steve Morse is losing count of how long he’s been working with Ernie Ball. Lets say 40-plus years to be safe!
Steve Morse wanted a guitar that was light enough to play every day. “I don't want to dread picking it up. I don't want it to fall over while its resting on my knee. It has to be perfectly balanced. It needs to be small enough so that I can take it anywhere, whether it’s on an airplane or sneaking it into places, carrying it with me in the taxi with the whole band and have the guitar in between my legs without it hitting anything.”
Morse’s custom guitar has 22 frets because the pickups HAVE to be perfectly placed. Distance matters here. Whether you want to capture the fundamentals or the harmonics, you have to be able to change the pickups to have a different sound.
“[Ernie Ball] also expanded upon my ideas. The headstock is a big improvement: straight pull, shorter distances, no string tree, so there’s no additional string tension when you change strings.”
You can really see the way Steve lights up when he talks about the guitar!
For Everything Ernie Ball and Steve Morse, There’s AMS
Want more Steve Morse — or maybe a shiny brand-new blue Ernie Ball guitar…? You know where to find it: right here at American Musical Supply.
We have all the Ernie Ball guitars and accessories you could ever want, and they all come with our VERY fast and free shipping (or 0% interest payment plans, if that’s what you’re into). And don’t forget to subscribe to the AMS YouTube channel for more content just like this — including more Steve Morse interviews and jams!
Seriously, he’s a regular at AMS.
