With or Without You guitar tone
U2 · The Edge (David Evans)
The Joshua Tree (Island, 1987) -- Danesmoate House and Windmill Lane; producers Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno
ambient chiming clean bed with an endlessly sustaining lead voice
The rig U2 used
Researched from interviews, production write-ups and gear histories — not guessed.
Guitar
Fender Stratocaster (arpeggio bed) and Michael Brook Infinite Guitar (sustaining lead) -- two separate instruments, two separate blocks
Amplifier
Vox AC30 Top Boost (1964)
Cabinet
Vox AC30 2x12 (Celestion Alnico Blue)
Microphone
Shure SM57 close, with a Neumann U87 further back
Signal chain
The order the original sound was built in. The exact settings get dialled for your own amp or modeller when you generate the tone.
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Why we think this is right
The sustaining lead is the best-documented element: Michael Brook described his Infinite Guitar in a 1995 Sound On Sound interview and confirmed he built three instruments, one of them for The Edge -- so this was his own guitar, not a borrowed prototype, and the sustain is a magnetic driver coil inside the instrument rather than an EBow or a loud amp. The rest of the chain rests on Daniel Lanois's account of the rig as three components in mono. Tempo is 112 BPM, giving 402 ms for the dotted-8th. Weak points, stated plainly: no source names the specific Stratocaster, no AC30 knob positions have ever been published for any U2 record, the reverb unit is attributed from the producer's known outboard rather than from a session sheet, and the exact bar at which the sustained line enters is a judgement from listening rather than a citation.
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_or_Without_You
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_(U2_song)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achtung_Baby
- Sound On Sound, December 1995 -- Michael Brook interview describing the Infinite Guitar's sustainer circuit and the three instruments he built
- U2 by U2 (HarperCollins, 2006) -- the band's own account, including Daniel Lanois playing Bono's green Gretsch on 'One'
- Daniel Lanois, widely quoted: 'just a guitar he liked through a Korg SDD-3000 into a Vox. Three components, mono -- that's it'
- Guitar Player, August 1989 -- The Edge on acquiring the Korg SDD-3000
- https://songbpm.com/ and https://tunebat.com/ -- tempo cross-check