Irish Whip - Equipment

Summary

Fender American Stratocaster	Rythm and lead guitar on almost every song, except from first album. Also used as a bass on the 6th album. The Boss BR8 has got a bass simulator and this guitar was used for it.
Squier Stratocaster	Rythm and lead guitar on the first album.
Gibson Les Paul Special	Lead guitar on the intro of the 6th album. This one will be used more often in the future, like on the Best Of.
Motion Guitar	Western guitar. Used for some acoustic songs.
Impuls Tracker	Drums, bass and keyboard. Some keyboard samples are taken from a Casio SA-10. On some songs it is mixed in the song, after the recording, but most of the time it is used as a sample in ImpulsTracker. The bass on the 6th album was done by the Fender.
Fratelli Indelicato	Spanish guitar, used on some acoustic songs.

Per album

From Unknown	All drums and bassed are recorded with Scream Tracker 3, wherethe samples are from is unknown. There is used one guitar for all songs: a Squier Standard Stratocaster. The guitaramp is also a Squier. Pedal is a Boss Heavy Metal Distortion. All songs edited with GoldWave on the computer.
In The Nick Of Time	ST3 is sill used, the guitar has been changed. It is now a Fender American Standard Stratocaster in Lake Placid Blue. Acoustic guitar is a brandless western guitar. The guitaramp has been changed into a Marshall Parker. Pedal is the same. All songs edited with GoldWave on the computer.
Black-Winged Angel	The bass- and drums are now played via ImpulsTracker. Guitar, amp and pedal has not been changed. All songs edited with GoldWave on the computer.
Yes Indeed	New samples in ImpulsTracker (from Against Widows (Amorphis) and Undone the Sweater Song (Weezer)). The keyboard stuff is from a Casio keyboard, a very cheesy one, played with ImpulsTracker. Guitars being used are a Ibanez Joey Satriani (on Headfirst) and a Fender Amrican Stratocaster (the rest of the songs). The acoustic guitars are still the brandless western guitar (on Buffy - Slayer, Goddess) and the Spanish guitar (on Krieg am Ostfront). Pedals are still the Heavy Metal Distorion and a Zoom 3000. All songs edited with GoldWave on the computer.
Not Even Close	Better mixing this time in ImpulsTracker. Further nothing has changed, just the Fender this time. All songs edited with GoldWave on the computer.
Lousy But Commercial	The quality has been improved very much, because everything is recorded on the Boss BR8. Bass recorded via the bass emulator on the BR8. The solo on the intro is played on the new Gibson Les Paul Special.
Was Hast Du Gelernt	No new instruments, but all songs are re-recorded. Most songs which had two guitars had both the Fender and the Gibson on it.
Beg To Differ Little Missy	Some songs have been recorded on the new digital harddisk record, the Yamaha AW16G. These songs have a much more full sound. This will be used in the future.

Complete History

The Beginning
About 6 or 7 years ago (probably somewhere in 1994 or 1995), mr Im's sister Sandra bought herself an acoustic guitar with steel strings. Im started to play on it also and after a while he got from a familymember an old acoustic guitar with nylon strings. He learned to play guitar on it. It was a very old guitar and it was held together with needles and pins. Barre-chords were pretty difficult to play on it, but it was very good too practice on.

The first electric guitar
After a year or so his siter left the house to live on her own. Im couldn't play on the western guitar anymore, but he kept on playing on his Spanish guitar. At the end of 1996 he thought it was time to buy his own guitar. He decided to buy an electric guitar. There weren't too much musicstores in the area, so Im went to a store with only a few guitars. He decided to buy a Squier Stratocaster, the color is wine-red. Very beautiful. He also started taking lessons. Soon he was able to play a lot of songs he liked, like Die Toten Hosen, Weezer and some other bands.

The first songs
Im and Pivo were already writing some songs, but they were not very good. They tried to do it too seriously. At the end of 1998 a guy (Mark Koenderman) from their athletics club told them how to record music on their computer. Off course it was very simple, but they just didn't know. They got a program from the same guy, called Sreacm Tracker 3. He explained how it worked and Im started to program the drums and bass. With another program (don't remember which one) they played the drum-file and recorded it together with the guitar and vocals. It didn't sound very good, because they didn't haev the best drum- and basssamples. You can hear it on their first album From Unknown. The second album, In The Nick Of Time was also recorded it way.

Improving quality
After the second album, Irish Whip got a new program called ImpulsTracker, again from their friend Mark Koenderman. The big improvement was, that the volumes of each instrument could be changed and not only the complete song. That way the bass could get down in volume and also the hi-hats, which was a problem, according to Im. However, they still had the same bass- and drumsamples. They recorded the third album, Black-Winged Angel, with the same samples, but with the other program, so it sounded better than the first two albums.

Changing guitars
In the beginning of 1999 Im thought it was time to buy a new guitar, because he jus wanted an original Fender very much. At a musicstore in Den Haag he saw a very beautifull Fender American Standard Stratocaster in color Lake Placid Blue. He was sold!! He just couldn't really afford it. After giving it some thoughts, he eventually bougth it in Amsterdam, at Dijkman Muziek. From the second till the last album, they're all played with the Fender guitar.
Short for releasing the Lousy But Commercial album, Im bought a new guitar, a Gibson Les Paul Special. Only the intro was played with it, but in the future more songs will be played with.

Another guitar
In the year 2000 Pivo thought the time was right to buy a guitar himself. First he bought a second hand Epiphone, but that wasn't a very wise choice, because the neck was completely ruined. He traded it for a second hand Ibanez Joey Satriani with a Floyd Rose tremelo. He's very proud of it! There's only one song played with it, but that might change in the future to get a new sound.

Better bass- and drumsamples
For the fourth album, Yes Indeed, Im used some new samples. The snare- and bassdrum he used from the song Against Widows by Amorphis. The bass came from a sample cd he once bought. At the fifth album, Not Even Close, he also used a drunmsample from the song Undone (The Sweater Song) by Weezer. The hihats came also from a sample cd.

The recording
All the five albums are recorded the same way: the drums and bass came via the computer throught the stereo and the guitar and voice are recorded at the same time via two microphones on a normal tape. After the songs is recorded, it was brought back to the computer where it was edited. If there was a solo, it was recorded later and mixed into the song.

This has changed, because Im has bought a digital soundrecorder, the Boss BR-8. The complete 6th has been recorded on it, which was a great advantage: Im could record everything he had to do and didn't have to wait for Pivo to sing with him.
Another advantage of the Boss BR-8, is that is has a bass-simulator. Now Im plays with his Fender directly in the BR-8 with a bass-sound. The sound is much fuller than it was before and off course much less noise.

Gibson Les Paul Special
In 2002 Im bought a Gibson Les Paul Special. It has a great sound and will absolutely be used in the future. On 'Lousy But Commercial' it's already used in the intro and on the Best Of it will used in a lot of songs. Some of those songs contain two guitars and the effect is very good, it has a much more full sound. You can hear it on the last two albums: Was Hast Du Gelernt and Beg To Differ Little Missy.

The recording: a new step
Eight tracks are great, but the band wanted to record all instruments in stereo. After a lot of thinking, mr Im bought a digital hardisk recorder with 16 tracks, a Yamaha AW16G. It has been used to record a few songs on the album Beg To Differ Little Missy. These songs have a much more full sound.