The guitars The Edge likes to play for U2

Four notes into "Where the Streets Have No Name" and you already know the band. 

Nobody else on earth sounds like that. 

Most guitar heroes get remembered for one guitar and one trick, but the Edge built one of the most recognisable sounds in rock without ever settling on either. 

He is not a guitarist who found his tone and stuck with it; he is a sound architect who treats every guitar as a different tool for a different job, and U2's whole back catalogue is the blueprint. 

Here is the shortlist he actually plays, and the songs on this site where each one earns its keep.

The Gibson Explorer

The 1976 Gibson Explorer is as close as the Edge gets to a signature guitar. He bought his first one in New York as a teenager in 1978, and it was there for U2 from the start. He now owns eleven of them, stock and nearly identical, and still reaches for one on stage today. It is the guitar behind the early, urgent sound of I Will Follow, and it turns up again decades later driving Beautiful Day.

The faux 12-string trick

The Edge has said a real 12-string is not always needed to get a 12-string sound. His usual move is to find two strings that can ring the same note, so an E chord might use a B, E, E and B and let them chime together. He has said this works especially well on the Explorer, which is why songs like Elevation sound denser than a single guitar should allow.

The Black Strat

A well-worn 1970s Fender Stratocaster, known simply as the Black Strat, was one of the first proper guitars the Edge owned, bought with his brother Dik before U2 existed. It carried the band through their early, martial-sounding records, and it is the guitar behind the slicing riff of Sunday Bloody Sunday. The main riff on Pride (In the Name of Love) was tracked on a Stratocaster too, before the Edge layered a 12-string on top for extra shimmer.

The Gibson Les Paul

The Edge bought an Alpine White 1975 Gibson Les Paul Custom in 1982, chasing the tone Steve Jones got on the first Sex Pistols album. He never quite found it, but the guitar became a mainstay anyway, thick and warm where the Strat and Explorer are bright and cutting. It is the guitar he leaned on for the brooding low end of One, recorded during the tense, breakthrough sessions for Achtung Baby.

The Rickenbacker 330-12

Twelve-string guitar is the rarest colour in the Edge's toolkit, kept for songs that need extra chime and density. He owns two nearly identical Rickenbacker 330-12s, a 1966 Fireglo and a 1967 in maple, and reaches for one whenever a song calls for that dense, ringing wash of overtones. You can hear it on Angel of Harlem and Love Rescue Me, both from the Rattle and Hum sessions, layered into the recording of Pride, and driving the funky, insistent groove of Mysterious Ways whenever the band play it live.

The Gretsch Country Gentleman

Less famous than the Explorer or the Strat, but a genuine part of the Edge's arsenal, the Gretsch Chet Atkins Country Gentleman is his go-to hollowbody. He tours with six of them, all built between 1963 and 1967, pulled out for a warmer, more acoustic-leaning sound than his solid-body guitars can give.

The Infinite Guitar

Not a guitar model so much as a piece of studio invention, the Infinite Guitar was a prototype device built by Michael Brook that let notes sustain indefinitely, with no need to pick again. The Edge used an early version of it to build the shimmering, held-note atmosphere of With or Without You, one of the defining textures of The Joshua Tree.