Expert: Joe - 6/22/2007

Question
i absolutely LOVE the sound of the distortion gavin used in institute and bush.  what kind of rig/effects/distortion did he use in both?  i'm mostly curious in what was used in institute.  it's such an amazing sound.

Answer
I can't speak to anything Gavin did in Institute as I have not read any interviews of him talking about Institute's sound nor did I get a chance to see them live with U2 when they toured.

As for Bush - Gavin was known to play many songs with no effects at all, just distortion through the amp.  I was standing in front of him on stage when he played live in Boston a few years back and he wasn't using any effects for 15 of the  20 tracks he played.  You can duplicate the rythem guitar of Cold Contagious, Everything Zen, and Machinehead with only a guitar and amp.  With the exception of The Science of Things the best effect to get to duplicate all the albums would be a Boss DS-1 or DS-2.  The only real reason you need these effects is to switch the sound in songs that have clean and distorted guitar in the verse/chorus.  Play a strat if you can.  Gavin always uses one live.

In a few of the songs you will hear a grinding guitar played with a flanger effect.  This can be accomplished with any pedal that does flanger.