Straightforward question for those who know their way around rock instrumentation and studio sessions: what instrument is producing the constant chugga-chugga throughout Stevie Nicks’ “Edge of Seventeen”? Is it a bass guitar, a conventional electric guitar, or something else? Couldn’t have been a programmed synth sound back then, could it have been? Was someone playing that chugga-chugga that precisely all song long?
It’s definitely being played by a guitar. There may be a bass guitar doubling it (I don’t have the recording handy right now). To me, it sounds as if there’s some delay (i.e. echo) effect on the guitar. Especially in the studio, it’s fairly simple to do that so that the echo is in time with the beat. It’s even possible live, as long as you have a drummer who doesn’t speed up. 
It’s Waddy Wachtel on a regular electric guitar. I’ve seen her live, and that’s how it’s performed. In the studio, I assume they looped it.
Thanks all. It’s such a deep-sounding note … that’s why I often wondered whether or not it was a bass. There is a conventional bass line in the song, as well … I guess I was thinking there were two bass parts in the song.
To me it sounds like the kind of sound you get when you play the guitar by touching the strings with the fingers of your left hand but not pressing them all the way down to the fingerboard.
Sounds like a regular electric guitar played with the outside of the palm of the right hand muting the strings down near the brigde. They ring some, but are muted quite a bit so they only ring for a very short time.
I haven’t played that particular song, but play a bunch of U2 and some other delay-focused songs.
It sounds like **Run Like Hell **by Pink Floyd off the Wall or **She Sells Sanctuary ** by The Cult. You set up your delay so that the echoes sync up with the beat - that way, when you hit one note, it echoes back in rhythm. Then you can sound notes and, as those echo back and decay over time, you hit another note, which also begins to echo back and decay. In effect, you end up only hitting notes occasionally but set up a pattern that sounds like you are hitting notes much more quickly.
Actual: (the one you hit is in Caps; the rest are echoes of it from the delay)
NOTE Note Note NOTE
And then while they are echoing, hit another one:
NOTE Note Note NOTE
But to the ear, it sounds like:
Note Note Note Note Note Note Note Note
So you have doubled up the pace of the riff, but you aren’t having to play superfast to do it. And the rhythm of the echoes act as your metronome so you stay locked in time. It can be really fun if you get it right.
**ascenray ** - are you talking about palm muting? Where you used the fat of your picking palm to rest on the strings near the bridge to get a chunka-chunka sound - like, say, the intro to Priest’s You’ve Got Another Thing Coming? If so, then yes, I agree, the 17 riff is played by palm muting - it gives it more beef and cuts the notes off more quickly so they don’t keep sounding and blur into the echoes coming back from the delay…(on review: what **Turek ** said…)
WordMan – is that how Ozzy’s “Bark At the Moon” is played?
(quickly do a mental review of Jake E. Lee’s playing on Bark…) yeah, actually I think it is.
While I don’t think they play it this way, it is very fun to play the Crue’s Looks that Kill this way - you get a cool, relentless feel to the riff…
Heh – I was just about to compare it to RLH, too, even tho I’ve never tried to compare them before and I haven’t heard EoS in around 10 years.
ETA: probably because that’s the song I think of most when the OP describes a guitar as doing a “chugga-chugga” sound.