Neon Trees – Habits
The music gear and equipment used by the artists, producers, engineers, and more involved in the making of the 2010 album Habits.
Music from Habits
Artists on Habits
Gear Used On Habits
Explore the instruments, equipment, software, and production tools used in the making of Neon Trees – Habits (2010). Click more on each item to see exactly how it was used.
Chris Allen
Roles:
Guitars used by Chris Allen on Habits
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Fender Eric Johnson Stratocaster Electric Guitar
Avg price: $2,515.44
"This is my Eric Johnson in tropical turquoise. I've had this for a couple years now. I was playing an old Korean strat, it was the first guitar I ever got 18 years ago. I just got this and I love it. It's got so many cool features on it. I've had it for about two years now. It feels like it's pretty new. It's got like a quarter sawn neck, so all green is going this way. It's not going to bow as much over time. It's got binding on the neck, which most strats don't. Also, one cool thing about it is that usually they have a string tree right here to hold the strings down against the nut here, but with the Eric Johnson model it's got a recessed head and also these pulls get shorter and shorter so that the strings pull down like this. it's supposed to help with sustain. It sounds good to me so I've been very happy with it. I have moded some things. On 'Everybody Talks,' there's an acoustic part that I actually recorded with like a 1946 Silvertone, like a really cheap archtop guitar. There was like this little acoustic sound that was kind of really key to the song so I had to be able to recreate an acoustic sound without being able to play an acoustic on stage. This is the ghost pickup. Graph Tech makes this and it's the Acousti-Phonic Ghost system. So it's got a pickup right here in the bridge and now I have a stereo jack right here. So it's sending this signal from my pickup and then a signal also from the piezo. This has a really nice acoustic sound to it. It's really cool. The first time I ever saw that was with the Cranberries. I think I saw them a long time ago and they were playing a song and it had this really nice acoustic sound to it and I was like 'Where is the acoustic up there?' I think someone was playing like a Parker Fly or something, but then I figured out what it was: they had a piezo pickup in the bridge. So I really like this one. I also like the stock pickup that comes in this, the Eric Johnson, but with a lot of the venues we play we get a lot of interference with the lighting and stuff so it'll create this sort of buzzy sound. And I mean single-coils are known for that, so I changed out the pickup here: it's a Lindy Fralin split rail and it really cuts out the noise and sounds good. I played Gibsons for a number of years, and actually on our last album 'Habits' I recorded most of the album with Gibsons. But a week after we finished in the studio I decided to bring my old Strat just to try it out. I was experimenting with some different amps and different pedals. I was trying to find the perfect combination to play live, and my Strat just sounded really good live. We'll try out and use fifteen different guitars in the studio, twelve different amps, just a ton of different pedals. Some of them I'm borrowing from other people, others I'm renting, or I'm just using some of my own stuff. We try not to limit ourelves in the studio trying to go, "Oh are we going to play this live exactly the same?' We just want to get the best product we can, and the best sound that we can get on the album. Then later we try to reproduce it. You don't want to stifle the creativity because you can only use one guitar live... I would have to say that the Eric Johnson is my number one. Because of the Acousti-Phonic piezo pickup in it I'm able to do the acoustic in it - it has a little more versatility to it. And so I end up having to play the [Eric Johnson] in certain songs where I can't really play other guitars."
