It stated that this guitar has a graphite nut, brass bridge saddles, modified Seymour Duncan "quarter pound" stack pickup and a Strat Tremolo. Issue This may be an error in the article. They may have been mistakenly describing the "early 's Tele" that the Edge talks about in the June Guitar Player interview. The year of this guitar is not certain. Gibson - Year unknown - Tobacco sunburst finish: This guitar has black P pickups and a trapeze tail piece.
The ES models have no sustain block inside. This gives them a very acoustic sound. Gibson Explorer - - Natural finish: "The Gibson Explorer The Edge bought new as a teenager was the first guitar he played in U2, and for me, it is synonymous with the unique sound of its owner.
The guitar has remained relatively stock. Gold Schaller tuning machines have been added, and the frets of the 16 radius rosewood neck have been replaced about three times with low and wide Dunlop fretwire. As the frets wear, they are leveled, rounded and polished to add some life between fret jobs. The neck is quite straight, woth only. An interesting point about the nut height measured as the distance from the bottom of the unfretted string to the top of the first fret is that the treble strings are very low about.
Dallas Schoo, The Edges long-time guitar tech, says the guitarist hits those bass strings quite hard, and they discovered the Explorer sounds best with the strings that high. The lower height means the pickups capture less bass, deliver less output and also produce a little air around the sound.
In addition, The Edge has the tailpiece screwed down to the body possibly to gain as much sustain as possible from the guitar. Schoo strings up the guitar with Ernie Balls gauged.
He uses a mixture of hobby wheel lube and graphite to keep the strings from sticking to the bone nut. He has used this from day one to the present. The Edge was seen using this guitar as early at the While most all interviews, magazines and online sources refer to this guitar as a model, I have seen it called a This time, he finally decided to get the guitar he had always wanted: a bonafide Gibson Les Paul.
Well, the Edge never found the tone, but the Alpine White Gibson Les Paul he bought the same guitar Jones used, right down to the color gave him plenty of songs and tones to use in upcoming U2 albums.
He never made any modifications to the guitar. The only thing that differentiated this guitar from something that came off the factory line was a decal on the back that had the number two.
The Edge used his Les Paul extensively on the next few U2 albums—especially Achtung Baby—and hundreds of live shows over the years. In , New Orleans was devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Edge and his bandmate Bono have always been heavily involved in charity efforts all over the world, and they decided to lend their star power to help the people affected by the natural disaster. To raise money for the people of New Orleans, the Edge donated his prized Les Paul to be auctioned off for Hurricane Katrina relief.
At least… so he thought. He immediately called Edge to ask if he knew it was coming. It sounded exactly like his original! When Hurricane Katrina struck Louisiana back in , the Edge wanted to visit and do what he could to help the people of New Orleans. Being a music city, so many people had lost their instruments to the floodwaters, so the Edge and Gibson came up with a plan to help.
Together, they designed a special Les Paul that would be made in a very limited production run of only a couple hundred guitars. All the proceeds would go straight to the hurricane relief efforts for those affected. He says that its tone is much warmer than his Les Paul, especially when he plays with his thumb and finger. Additionally, he played and signed several models under the Rising Katrina foundation only to auction them and reopen several venues. His tech ran into LA to a music store called Westwood.
On the wall, he saw a yellow Fender Telecaster. The guitar was exactly what the Edge was looking for! They were there when the Edge bought the guitar, and he never took them off. The Edge typically uses only the bridge pickup because he wants that famous Tele brightness.
Acoustic guitars are tricky for the Edge to play on stage. As you know, the Edge must have a precise tone. So, he needed an acoustic that could give him what he wanted. The pros at Taylor stepped up and built the Edge a guitar designed to suit his specifications. It has a larger bottom end and high shoulders, blending the two body types into one incredible guitar. This acoustic has two pickups. The second is an offset soundhole pickup that the Edge installed himself. Installing the soundhole pickup was quite the process.
He repeated the process until it was absolutely perfect. Most of the amplified sound comes from the soundhole pickup, but the Edge can mix the two sets of electronics to blend his perfect tone. Although he may tweak the mix, he has used the same Fender and Vox combo amps for the majority of his career.
The Edge used this amp so much over the years that it started to get worn out. To conserve his beloved original, the Edge reached out to the pros at Vox to design another amp that sounded exactly like his original. It had been repaired by so many different shops over the years that it had a hodgepodge of parts, including Marshall capacitors. All the random parts working together was what made the amp sound so good, and unique. Vox ended up making several amps for the Edge to try out and see if they could even come close to his original.
Instead of sending it back, he kept it and added it to his five-amp setup, almost as an effect pedal. The Edge brings a few vintage Fender Tweed Deluxe amps on tour, with models ranging from to Although you might think a rock star like the Edge would crank his amps up, he usually runs his Tweed amps with the volume set to three.
In , as the Edge was working with Fender on his signature Stratocaster, he decided to add a cherry on top of an already perfect cake and design a signature amp, too. The Edge Fender Deluxe amp is a combination of all the things that made the old amps great with a few modern twists.
The designs are based on the vintage models with a tried-and-true Celestion inch speaker. Every single signature amp is hand-wired, so no two sound exactly the same. While that might sound like a nightmare for a tone nut like the Edge, it really means that he has a lot of different sounds to add to his repertoire. One signature amp, in particular, had a nice crunchy sound that he uses quite frequently.
You can hear the Edge talk about the process of building his signature amp in this video from Fender. To make up for the sound, he added the vintage Harvard to the mix. The Fender Harvard was originally a mid-range amp, designed to fit between the beginner Champ and the professional Deluxe models. So we went for the first album with the Explorer.
But I really missed the Strat, so when we got a little money together — when we got our record deal — the first chance I got I bought my black Strat, which I still have. That was a Stratocaster built in Was it a standard-issue Fender? It has some interesting features: the bridge is a brass bridge, not like the standard Fender bridge, and again that adds some resonance.
It has a little more sustain, a little more girth to the tone. And I put a DeMarzio pickup in, which gets that tone. In addition to my Fender amp, I play to a Vox, which is a very bright amp, so it gives a little more substance.
Was that true in this case? So I rely on sound, really in that sense, to get inspired. Yeah, I absolutely was loving the flexibility of the instrument at the time. I think of all electric guitars it probably has the most versatility. That is just the way the Strat responds. Why now? Well, I started this relationship with Fender, and for the first time I guess it felt like a natural thing to do.
It was just born out of my enthusiasm for the instrument and for the company. They made it a lot of fun to collaborate with them and explore ideas. When you began working with Fender, what did you ask for specifically?
So we tried to create that. How did you go about finding that sound? We did it incrementally. And the things that vary are the wood, the pickups, the bridge, those things. Before I got into this stuff, I thought that the sound must come from the pickups and basically the size of string.
How could wood, bridge material, those things, have an impact on what is an electrical device? What did you learn about first? What was new to me was the difference that the wood used in the body would have on the tone of the instrument.
They use two different woods: alder and ash. What did you discover when you looked into those woods? It was a real eye-opener. I researched my instruments from the Seventies, and I found out that both of my favorite ones have alder bodies. But I wondered if that could be coincidental. I found it fascinating, because there was a clear and distinct difference in each case. This was not just a cosmetic thing; this actually translated into tonal variation.
Did you test-drive the different combos?
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