See U2’s the Edge ‘Geek Out’ About New Custom Guitar

When you began working with Fender, what did you ask for specifically?
It was really pretty straightforward with both the guitar and the amp, like, I have these instruments that I’ve been using for 30 years that I love that have been on every U2 album since I bought them, and some of our classic songs, every U2 tour. So the throw-down was, “Can we get a guitar that sounds better, that suits these classic songs and is even more true, more pure, more what’s needed?” The classic U2 songs that I play the Strat on are “Where The Streets Have No Name,” “Pride (In the Name of Love),” “Bad” and “Bullet the Blue Sky.” I’ve tried those songs over the years with slightly different equipment, as needs and the availability of technology have dictated, but there’s always a sound I’m going for, a sound in my imagination that I’m trying to match, and I have a very subjective, visceral connection with that sound. So we tried to create that.

How did you go about finding that sound?
We did it incrementally. I’m a bit of a scientist myself, so first and foremost, I wanted to find out a bit more about the Strat as an instrument, the permutations of its design. And I was interested to find out that there’s more than one standard build to a Strat. And the things that vary are the wood, the pickups, the bridge, those things.

There were certain things that I’ve definitely always liked in a Strat – like the neck dimension, and the slightly larger headstock of the Seventies instrument, which gives it a little more resonance – but I ended up learning a lot about the little nuances, how everything down to what the bridge is made of impacts the sound. Before I got into this stuff, I thought that the sound must come from the pickups and basically the size of string. I thought, “It’s electric. How could wood, bridge material, those things, have an impact on what is an electrical device?” But news is they do hugely.

What did you learn about first?
What was new to me was the difference that the wood used in the body would have on the tone of the instrument. They use two different woods: alder and ash.

What did you discover when you looked into those woods?
It was a real eye-opener. I researched my instruments from the Seventies, and I found out that both of my favorite ones have alder bodies. But I wondered if that could be coincidental. So Fender built a couple Strats with ash bodies for me, and they also built them with a maple fretboard, which is what I’d been used to, and they did a couple with a rosewood fretboard, just to see exactly what difference it would make. I found it fascinating, because there was a clear and distinct difference in each case. This was not just a cosmetic thing; this actually translated into tonal variation.