I've been into Coldplay for over a year now and I am obsessed about getting the Coldplay sound on my guitar. I want to know if anyone knows how Jonny gets so much sustain in things like 'God put a smile' and 'A Rush of blood' (live 2003 solo). Is it his rat distortion or the loudness of his amp or what? I don't have a rat or any of his FX- only a Zoom G1-X multi-FX pedal. Thanks

Johnny's often using the E-Bow (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Bow) to produce these synth-like sounds.

On Live 2003 DVD on 'A Rush of blood' he is definitely using a pick/plectrum on his solo after the first chorus. He is also using a lot of reverb so maybe that's giving him loads of sustain.

I think that he uses his e-bow at the end of the his riff!

He got delay pedals that creates a lot of sustain(I am not sure)

I recently bought a Boss CS-3 to get sustain but at max sustain there's too much attack emphasis for Coldplay (even with Attack at 0). I read somewhere that the MXR micro amp adds sustain. Do you think that's the sustain sound?

well you create sustain by adding distortion, but you have to find a level between the add of distortion and clean tone , because jons tone is slightly distorted and still he has alot of sustain so i gues adding some delay and reverb do the trick.

 

 

but if you test by yourself you will see if you play with alot of distortion/gain you will have endless of sustain "more peeping"