For individual crystallites, the phase of 14 N ssbs varies widely, therefore one-pulse excitation or one-step CP would lead to incoherent excitation (or CP) causing cancellation of the signals for powder samples. However, when a pair of long pulses are used as in the cases of HMQC and DCP HETCOR, the phase spread does not affect the encoding of the indirectly observed quadrupolar nuclei. Such is the key to why high efficiencies can be achieved for long-pulse HMQC and DCP HETCOR . This mechanism has been extended to the design of novel satellite-transition magic-angle spinning (STMAS) and multiple-quantum magic-angle spinning (MQMAS) sequences using rotor period long ST pulses. These pulse sequences are highly efficient and require low rf power and have succeeded in obtaining isotropic spectra for the largest quadrupolar coupling to date.