The Matt’s Guitar Shop private collection will soon have a new prized addition: the Explorer previously owned by David Evans, a.k.a. The Edge! This little piece of history has travelled all over the world since the tour of the legendary album The Joshua Tree in 1987, and was constantly used both live and in the studio for about twenty years before being auctioned off in 2008 to help the city of New Orleans hit by Katrina three years earlier.
There are not many guitarists who have chosen the Explorer as their main instrument, far from it, and among them The Edge is undoubtedly the most successful. Far from the very “guitar hero” image that the extravagant shape of the instrument can suggest, The Edge has become known for his great mastery of sound textures. A virtuoso of the delay pedal rather than exotic scales, he alone has defined the pop guitar sound from the ‘80s to the present day (just listen to Coldplay or Radiohead to hear the legacy of The Edge in current-day music).
The Edge is particularly renowned for his demanding sound-production standards and his meticulous approach to equipment, so when he decided to opt for an Explorer in U2 despite the resolutely non-punk image of the instrument, there was a good reason for it. No one has played Gibson’s unloved creation with such talent since then.