Recording Studios / Equipment

Of course most of the FRS presenters past & present had (have) their own recording studios. But when speaking about ‘the FRS-Holland studio, it was (is) Peter Verbruggen’s one which was used, because most of the FRS parties (X-Mas, Birthdays etc.) and the final recordings of all shows on the “master tapes” were done in that particular studio. It started as a little but cosy studio at a time Peter still was living at his mum’s house (1980-1984). This first recording studio consisted of a 5-channel stereo mixing desk, a Philips Pro 12 tape recorder, a Teac tape recorder, two remote controlled Marlux record decks, a microphone, a Luxman amplifier, Nikko equalizer, a home built compressor, a Teac cassette deck and last but not least an 8-track jingle machine! Within a year the 5-channel mixer was replaced by a larger 12-channel one. Fred van Es who was one of the presenters in the original FRS team, built the compressor and record desk control unit.

Peter then moved and studio #2 (1984-1986; housed in a very little bedroom) replaced the one at his parent’s house. Peter moved again, to a larger house and a more comfortable studio (#3/ 1986-1993) was the result (on the attic just like #1).
In 1993 Peter made another move and studio #4 had to be built, once again on the attic. Shortage of space made Peter decide to build a brandnew studio next to his house. In March the first work started, early September the studio was completed. The structural part was already finished early June but the interior of the studio took much too long. One of the handicaps was Peter was looking for a new mixing desk but couldn’t find a suitable one. In the end he succeeded (Dateq GPM 8TI), and with the help of other people the studio became operational.
In the course of the 1990s most of the original studio equipment was replaced. MiniDiscs (and the failed Philips Digital Cassette Recorder >DCC) were introduced making analogue tape recorders and cassette decks superfluous more or less. Today’s studio consists of:

To bring some nostalgia: the Teac tape recorder has survived but is’t used anymore.
Since a couple of years we also make use of so called computer based Play Out software: a system of 3 virtual players, Hot Key sets, record and jingle libraries etc.

10-channel Dateq BCS50 mixing desk
Denon twin CD unit
Compressor/limiter & voice processor processing equipment from DBX
Enhancer processor from Behringer
Amplifier from Denon & DBX equalizer
Microphone (Rode Broadcaster)
Mini Disc player (3 from Sony, 1 from Tascam)
Technics SL-1210 record deck
Patchbay Samsom (linking all equipment)
Tape recorder Teac A-2300SX
Twin cassette player from Marantz

Apart from the main studio, each FRS presenter uses his private one. Some are only used for FRS recording purposes while at least one is (also) used for other radio production purposes.