A Study of The Edge's Guitar Delay (U2) -- All I Want Is You (Rattle And Hum)

The Edge's Delay Settings > All I Want Is You (94 bpm)

Starting at time 0.00 at the beginning of the CD single version, the sample runs from [1:24.75-1:25.25 secs].
In the sample you hear Edge's pick attack on 2 notes (one low and then one higher) and then the delay of the first note, while Bono is singing. There's 1 short echo (~5ms) on the notes, but nothing like most of the other songs I've looked at. That echo could easily be room echo, so I'd say no 'short delay' on this song.
Note: Edge's delay is set to 425ms which is not in an obvious time with the song's tempo (94 bpm). This is a very rare case. Edge usually uses a delay time of 3/16 which would have been 484ms in this case, which may have been too long to be coherent so he chose a slightly shorter delay.
The 425ms is equal to a 1/3 of a 'quarter note triplet'. There are 4 1/4 notes per bar and 2 1/4 note triplets; each triplet has three notes each. So 1/3 of a quarter note triplet is equal to 1/6 of the length of a bar. This sounds a bit out of step with the song's rhythm, but that idea matches the slightly off-key guitar solo in the song.
On the acoustic guitar, there's a delay of 325 ms (= 1/8 @ 93 bpm) with 3-4 faint repeats. You can hear it here, slowed down 4x.
On Bono's voice, there's a delay of 125 ms. You can hear it here, also slowed down 4x.

Here's the sample clip I studied for this song (it's slowed down 4x maintaining the same pitch and matches the waveform in Figure 1)

Figure 1: Waveform of the sample clip

There's 1 delay and it's panned right. This is the most likely signal path:

   Guitar -> Signal split to A/B:

     A -> amp #1  (panned left)

     B -> 425ms (1 repeat)  -> amp #2   (panned right)

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Your Comments

thank you for all this detail,you have hel;ped me somuch,even in finding the exact effect bono uses on his voice,i dont know if you know by chance anyone that has a backing track of origion of species do you?that would be so great,im looking for backing tracks to practice my guitar and vocals,i am a 1 man u2 cover you see hehe respect mark

-- mark, March 19, 2007

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