Photos
Chris Henderson
3 Doors Down
Call it a cosmic coincidence. Chris Henderson was in a Las Vegas music store in 2000. His band 3 Doors Down had just begun their climb to platinum success. A salesman handed him a PRS Custom 22 and he instantly fell in love with the guitar.
"I'd never played a PRS before," Henderson recalls. "And I was completely floored. But at that time, I couldn't afford it. So I walked out of there and immediately called my manager to see if we could work out some way for me to get that guitar. And before I could say anything he said, 'PRS just called. They want to know if you want to try their guitars.' "
And so Chris got his Custom 22 - two of them, in fact. These and a PRS Singlecut can be heard all over Away From the Sun, the 2002 gold album by 3 Doors Down and their '05 platinum smash Seventeen Days. That's Chris' Singlecut on the opening riff to the hit, "When I'm Gone", for example. The band's chart-friendly brand of Souther-accented modern rock requires Henderson to go from gently sparkling arpeggios to heavy artillery crunch at the drop of a downbeat. He relies on his PRS guitars to take him there. "I'm not a shredder," he says of his playing style. "I'm more of a 'pay attention to details' guy."
A straight-talking Southern gent, Henderson grew up in the small town of Escatawpa, MS, where he first joined forces with the other guys in 3 Doors Down. And despite the band's phenomenal success, Chris has hung onto a deeply ingrained sense of humility and gratitude for his good fortune. He declares himself "the luckiest guy on the planet" to have been honored with his own PRS signature model.
The PRS Chris Henderson is based on Chris' Singlecut, but with a third humbucker fitted between the original two. The extra pickup is coil-tapped and is activated via a push-pull pot on the tone knob. "I wanted this guitar to sound like many guitars," Henderson explains. "I was trying to make a guitar that I could use on stage and that I could take into the studio and have that one guitar do anything."
A prototype Chris Henderson model arrived at the studio in time for Chris to play the opening riff on the hit "Let Me Go." And the production model is all over the band's latest, self-titled release which is also selling like crazy. While the record biz at large is currently in peril, 3 Doors Down continue to defy all odds and are still going strong.
"Critics hate us, which always means our records are gonna do well," Chris laughs. "The worse the reviews, the more the records sell. We have a a core audience that has stuck with us. And we try to support them like they supported us."
As a case in point, Henderson has instituted a new policy at 3 Doors Down concerts. If a fan brings a Chris Henderson model to the show, Chris will play it on stage. "I'll play one of my signature models or a Tremonti," he says. "They're all beautiful guitars. This just proves that you can go into a music store, buy a PRS off the wall and hand that guitar to any player in the world, in any situation, and it'll be ready to go. These are the ultimate professional instruments."
