Citation:
EXTRACT FROM GUITAR WORLD SEPTEMBER 1997 - “A DELUGE OF GUITAR SOUNDS - ACE PRODUCER FLOOD ON HONING THE EDGE'S TONE. “ BY ALAN DI PERNA
"We nicknamed it the '747' guitar," says the man they call Flood (born Mark Ellis), U2's longtime co-producer and engineer. He's referring to the spectral, feed backy guitar tone heard on the intro and choruses of "Gone", from U2's newest album, Pop. But why "747"? "'Cause originally it just sounded like this ridiculous jet plane taking off and going absolutely mad," Flood elaborates. "It's actually a sound that the Edge came up with ages ago. It's him using his Korg SDD delay heavily fed back and then going into a couple of different fuzz pedals and a Whammy pedal. One of the fuzz pedals was a Fuzz Face. I can't remember what the other one was, to be quite honest. But the way he's got it set up, the guitar starts feeding back in a controllable way that sounds very uncontrollable. Sometimes you get very frustrated with feedback because you can't control it. The beauty of this sound is that if you want to play something very specific with it, you can. But if you want to just close your eyes and not think about it, the thing will go completely mad on its own. Quite often, it depended on whether Edge had the Whammy pedal on or whether he'd switched on one of the fuzz pedals. He uses a semi-acoustic [i.e. thin-bodied hollowbody] guitar - either an Epiphone or a Gretsch - with that setup to get that sound."
"747" Korg SDD3000 settings - Attenutator: -20db, Input: 6, Delay: 100 ms, Feedback: 5, Filters: Both Flat, Waveform: ENV (bottom), Intensity: 10, Frequency: 10, Level Balance: 5, Attenuator: +4db
Effects chain > Guitar (semi hollow) > korg sdd 3000 > Fuzz Face > Wah fiexed pos > Big Muff > Whammy 2 oct sweep > Amp..
