Rigged: War From a Harlots Mouth Guitarist Simon Hawemann
Hi! My name is Simon and I play guitar in War from a Harlots Mouth, but let’s dumb that down to WFAHM. We’re a technical metal/mathcore band and are all playing Ibanez string instruments because they are great for metal. It’s as simple as that.
We make things a little more complicated because we play six, seven and eight-string guitars. Why? Because it’s good to have choices when you’re writing. When you go on tour it’s stupid, but oh well… we have yet to start playing those seven-string songs live.
For tours I usually have a main and backup guitar for each tuning. My main eight-string is a brand new, white RG2228 and my backup is my customized RGA8 with a beautiful replacement body built by a local luthier here in Berlin, Germany. The latter used to be my main eight-string, but the 2228 simply plays easier.
My main six-string is a neck-thru Prestige RG, and it’s gotta be one of the best guitars Ibanez has ever built. The neck is so incredibly fast and smooth it practically plays itself. My backup is the “Vice City,” another RG. When you see it, you’ll get it. All of my guitars are loaded with DiMarzio D Activators, by the way.
Now that we’ve added seven-strings, we’ll have to take them on tour in the future. And, surprise surprise, I have two RG7s for that. I used to really dislike RGs back in the day because I was more into vintage style guitars like Les Pauls. However, once I played my first RG, I was really impressed with how comfortable it was. I have a bunch of RG six-strings at home, such as a 1989 RG550 in road flare red, which is considered the classic RG. I just kinda collect them but I won’t take most of them on tour, ever.
Live, I’m using a POD X3 as a preamp. I’ve played Line6 gear for eight years now and you can absolutely dial in a great tone with it, although people will tell you the opposite. We used PODFarm for the recording of MMX and Voyeur, so if you wanna check out our tone, there you go. While I usually play the POD through a pretty average Rocktron solid state poweramp live, I absolutely prefer playing it through the poweramp of a Peavey 5150 and an Orange 4×12 cab. You can make the earth shake with that combo, I’m telling you. We are also using the DI outputs of the PODs live and sending that signal straight to the board. Mixing the direct signal with the microphone signal from the cab usually makes for great results because you get the best of both worlds.
Our other guitarist Daniel has the same setup as I do and mainly plays his Ibanez RG2228, RGA8 and RGT six-string. Filip plays Ibanez 5-string basses, preferrably the ATK series.
Simon / WFAHM
WFAHM’s new album Voyeur is out now and can be ordered here.
