A Study of The Edge's Guitar Delay (U2) -- Walk On (All That You Can't Leave Behind)

The Edge's Delay Settings > Walk On (105 bpm)

Starting at time 0.00 at the beginning of the CD track, the sample runs from [27.75 - 28.5 secs].
The sample is of a high 'E' (12th fret, E string) before the vocals come in.
The 2 'main' delays are:
- 1/8 (290 ms), panned mostly right.
- 3/16 (420 ms), panned mostly right.
The guitar is very overdriven and a little buried in the mix, so you can't easily hear the 2 delays at normal speed.
There's clearly a short delay (~10ms) surrounding the attack and each delay repeat which you can see in the waveform; this comes from microphone placement (see the main page for more info).
Note that this is about the same setup as Edge used on 'Streets'.

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

This is the most likely signal path:

   Guitar -> Signal split to A/B:

     A -> 290ms (1 repeat only)  ==  1/8 @ 105 bpm
              (with modulation, about 70% of the inital signal) -> amp #1 -> panned right mostly

     B -> 420ms (1 repeat only)  == 3/16 @ 105 bpm 
              (with modulation, about 70% of the inital signal) -> amp #2 -> panned right mostly

Delay 'before and after' demo: (Remember, it's an acoustic guitar and I'm only demo-ing the delay settings, not trying to sound exactly like the record!)

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


|--------12-----|
|-----------10--| 
|:-11----------:|
|:----12-------:|
|---------------|
|---------------|

Over these chords:  D A G Em / D A G E

Over the last E major chord:
|-------12------|
|----------12---|
|----13---------|
|-14------------|
|---------------|
|---------------|

Recorded with: 1972 Gibson Les Paul (cream) and for the solo, his maple 1976 Gibson Explorer.

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