Expert: Tom Ryan Date: 3/10/2006 Subject: U2-Edges sound
Question I was wondering if you could help me. I want to play some U2 songs but I'm not sure exactly how to get the sound. What type of settings should I use on my guitar and my amp, and which pickups should I use on my Strat. I'm looking for the sounds like the edge has on "streets have no name" "miracle drug" "beautiful day" "with or without you" and "elevation". Now on songs like elevation what do i use for distortion and what does he use for that like robot type sound when he plays live. And in with or without you what does he use for that sustained type sound during the verses. I no this is alot but any kind of help would be appreciative.
Thank you, Tom
Answer A large part of Edge's sound is derived from mikeing Vox amps with Neumann microphones. The exact settings are a mystery to me, as I've never had such a setup myself, but I'm sure you could find it if you toyed with it long enough.
As for effects, you could get his signature pre-1986 sound and many of the post-'86 sounds with a good delay pedal. You'll want to use what's called an E-bow for the long sustained notes on "With Or Without You." If you've read anything about Edge using something called "Infinite Guitar," that basically means any technique that produces infinitely sustained notes. That's exactly what an E-bow does, and Edge has been using one in live performances of "With Or Without You" and "Love Is Blindness" since at least 1993. I think he also uses it on "Mofo."
Anything from 1991 and later is pretty experimental stuff, and I haven't figured it all out yet. One breakthrough I had was in finding the right combination of effects for "Lemon." I used a pitch shift pedal (pitch set to 2 octaves higher, feedback and original signal set to 100%), fed into a reverb pedal (original signal set to 0% with a long decay reverb), and finally fed into a tremelo pedal, and it came out sounding like that pipe organ-esque sound heard throughout the song.
I've never tried to reproduce the "Elevation" riff, but I would guess it's probably just a combination of fuzz pedals and possibly a flange pedal or an auto-wah pedal. I'd start with a Boss Hyper Fuzz pedal.
As far as the guitar settings go, I usually get better results with humbuckers than single coil pickups. I built a Strat copy that has humbuckers in all three positions, each with coil tapping to allow me to choose Strat tones if I wished. It also has a Fishman Power Bridge which somewhat emulates the Neumann-miked amp sound. Combined with a delay effect, you can get some pretty Edge-like sounds with that setup. Usually I use the bridge position pickup with both coils activated.
