Edge's "747" (U2 - MoFo - PopMart)

[Timo]

Hard to describe, but the Edge (U2 guitarist) achieves an really nice transposed, filtered, resonant, distorted, delay type effect using the guitar in the opening of MoFo from the album Pop. I've seen it coined as a (Boeing) "747" effect in a few places.

The best example can be seen (broadband only) on YouTube at the Mexico City leg of the PopMart tour which you can see/hear at 2:29 > 2:46 with a great long processed sustain phase, although it can also be seen/heard at 0:45 > 0:55:



The YouTube version has a long intro (really sorry), but it's an alright performance. Love the ending when they're all just grooving along. But I digress...

Or here's a quicker clip to show a brief clip from the album:

[U2 - MoFo (330kb MP3) - © U2/IslandRecords] However, this is tame in comparison with the live version from the YouTube clip.

Any ideas how to reproduce this sound?

A DigiTech whammy pedal is a given for the transposing/pitch-shifting, and delays are also used to create the trails, but how would you go about applying the distortion and acquiring that "fizzyness" as Edge bends the note back upwards. A way I've managed to get a similar effect to the latter is on the Virus where you can use white noise as a frequency-modulation source to process an oscillator. Unfortunately I can't send external audio (guitar output) through the Virus's oscillator stage. Another way I've synthesised a similar 'white-noise fuzziness' effect is by using an LFO to modulate the incoming pitch extremely quickly (100Hz+), but not intense/wet enough to de-stabilise the overall pitch. I guess that's a form of FM, too.

A guy on Youtube has tried to emulate the 747 (albeit minus the white fizz) to a certain degree, which is a great starting point, but it doesn't seem as controlled or wide as Edge's:



Separately, I'm not sure how feedback would be used, or filtering to reproduce the sound. - Does it sound like it's self oscillating? Sounds quite resonant.

I don't have a working computer presently (hoping to get one soon), which I normally use for playing through plugins live, as opposed to loads of outboard guitar stomp boxes, so it's merely speculation at this time. However, could something like Guitar Rig, Amplitube or the Waves GTR plugins be able to achieve this type of sound, or could it only possibly be achieved by using live amp'ing for feedback and so on?

[Drammy]

Nice clips!

No idea though, sorry!

[Khazul]

You could try a bit of actual feedback about on your virus

Loop outs aback to ins and reprocess through a second patch in multi mode, mixing with the origina out - probably get some cool phasing effects thrown in too.