A Study of The Edge's Guitar Delay (U2) -- I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For (The Joshua Tree)

The Edge's Delay Settings > I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For (101 bpm)

Starting at time 0.00 at the beginning of the CD track, the sample runs from [10.3 - 10.8 secs].
The sample is of the last high 'C' (8th fret, E string) that Edge hits before the vocals come in (the vocals enter at the very end of the clip). There's the trail end of the earlier 'Ab' (9th fret, B string) in there early too.
The 2 'main' delays are:
- 3/16 (450 ms), panned mostly left; you can hear it sharply in the about the middle of the sample, on the left.
- 1/16 (150 ms), panned mostly right; note how the 3rd 150ms delay (450ms) is not very strong compared to the same spot @450ms in the left track as mentioned above.
Both delays have a lot of the modulation on them (you can hear it on some of the delays in the clip especially - the 'waving' vibrato sound). This is probably the SDD-3000 modulation, which is similar to a chorus/vibrato effect.
There's clearly a short delay (~5ms) from mic bleeds (see main page).

Here's an mp3 of me playing the main riff from the song,
with no delay and, later, with delay.
(I turned the delay on a few seconds into the recording).

I used a Fender Telecaster (middle pickup) into a $100
Line 6 Toneport on my PC with the setup on the right, although
using the '57 on-axis' microphone setting.

I had to use a Korg SDD-3000 for the delay because
the Toneport delay options don't (yet) include a digital
delay with modulation.

Note: The song is played Capo 4 with this main chord:
  AM7   Then D E A for the chorus
|--4-- 
|--5--
|--2--
|-(2)-
|--0--
|-----

Here's the sample clip I studied for this song (it's slowed down 8x maintaining the same pitch and matches the waveform in Figure 1)

Figure 1: Waveform of the sample clip

There's 3 delays. This is the most likely signal path:

   Guitar -> Signal split to A/B:

     A -> 150ms (6-7 repeats)  ==  1/16 @ 101 bpm
              (with modulation, about 70% of the inital signal) -> amp #1 -> panned right mostly

     B -> 450ms (1-2 repeats)  == 3/16 @ 101 bpm 
              (with modulation, about 50% of the inital signal) -> amp #2 -> panned left mostly

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Your Comments

that helped me out heaps. do you think you can put a tab up for it? cant find any good tabs around the net thanks shaun

-- shaun, Dec 19, 2006

Thank you, man. A really complete information. I think that that you put in here is enough. hnk you aaiiinn...

-- RAMON, Jun 2, 2011

What is the third delay? Thanx -mark

-- Mark, Aug 28, 2011

The site creator--invaluable analysis, so thank you--can confirm, butreading thee intro I believe the third delay arises from the fac that The EEdge runs two separate delays through AC30s a few fee apart fromm each other: "Ther' cleaarlly a short delay (~5ms) from mic bleeds (see main pae)).

-- Jim, Feb 20, 2012

Super helpful tutorial, thanks a lot 👍

-- Pete, June 6, 2024

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