Oops, I apologize for not properly answering you in my previous question. Somehow I misread “All I Need” as “Where I End And You Begin”…. Not quite sure how that happened.
You are certainly correct that Ed loops during the live performance of All I Need.
As you can hear at 3:22, the sound is more or less fully formed when Ed begins to play it. There are two different components which seem to be looped - a lower droning sound, and higher pitched “fragments.” Further notes are overdubbed a little later in the song, but those notes have the same “sound” as the higher pitched ones.
An important part of how he creates the drone at least is the Fernandes Native Pro's sustainer system, though an almost identical effect could be made with an EBow.
The sustainer system plus a couple of delay pedals would yield that sort of sound, and that’s probably how he did it. There’s some movement to the sound, and that could due to use of the EHX Deluxe Memory Manwith vibrato added to the repeats. There’s definitely also some distortion (not too much, though, so perhaps just Hotcake or just Sparkle Drive), and maybe some compression to even things out.
Ed loops the drone fairly quickly before switching to the higher pitched sounds. He doesn’t have a chance to turn on any new effects when he makes the change, so they must be the same. I therefore suspect that those fragmented notes are created by only briefly pressing down on the strings (due to the nature of the sustainer system, Ed does not need to pick the strings). The delay causes the notes to repeat in that consistent (but fragmented) way However, I think that he may have added his Digitech Whammy for those extra high pitched notes.
Ed has created similar weird high pitched noises with his Line 6 DL4's looper, as heard on Little By Little. However, from where Ed is adjusting on his pedal board, he must be using his Akai Headrush E2 for looping.