wooden body. In 2004, he requested TALBO Secret FACTORY, a manufacturer of Talbos run by other musicians who also liked the guitar and wanted to continue to use it, to build a Talbo of his own design, called ICE-9 (named after the material of the same name from Kurt Vonnegut's novel Cat's Cradle). It became Hirasawa's main guitar for the next eight years. To showcase it, he made an eponymous mini-album in 2005. Hirasawa has continued to work with the TALBO Secret FACTORY, requesting the conversion of one of his early Tōkai models into a new design of his, the ASTRO, in 2011 and asking for the renewal of the PHOTON with new specifications after two decades of usage. In 2012, Secret FACTORY co-founder HISASHI gifted him a Talbo of his own design, the EVO 0101Z, which Hirasawa adopted as his new main guitar, owning standard copies as well as two equipped with single coil guitar pickups for selective usage. Besides those, Hirasawa has also used different types of guitar for specific purposes, playing MIDI guitars like the Ibanez X-ING IMG-2010 and Casio MG500, various acoustic and classical models, classic surf ones like the Mosrite and the Jaguar, and the Aria AS-100C/SPL silent guitar. Electronics Hirasawa has used Amiga computers extensively in his work, starting out with CG production in 1987, and later on applying it on his albums and live shows, using applications such as Say, SCALA, Bars & Pipes, SuperJAM! and OctaMED. He stopped using Amigas with the LIMBO-54 shows of 2003 and the Byakkoya/Paprika albums of 2006, since "maintaining an Amiga now is, like maintaining a classic car, costly". In the '90s he started a gradual transition to Microsoft Windows (later on dabbling in Ubuntu for a time), using programs such as Delay Lama, Vocaloids, Bars'n'Pipes (an unofficial continuation of the Amiga program), Cakewalk Sonar and Synth1. When choosing string tones Hirasawa aims to find ones with unstable pitches and a "dark sound", which he finds harmonious, such as the Mellotron, Kurzweil synths and EASTWEST's line of Symphonic sounds. Recording/production In the '90s, Hirasawa gradually moved his work from professional facilities to home, dubbing his workspace on various residences "Studio WIRESELF". He finally moved completely to it by the recording of 2000's Philosopher's Propeller. The following year he undertook the sustainable energy project "Hirasawa Energy Works" and changed his lifestyle so that all his music would be