One of the most remarkable guitars used by Prince is his cloud guitar. Not as exotic as the symbol or … guitar, but also not as plain as his Hohner telecaster.<\/p>\n
The first cloud guitar was originally built in 1983 by David Husain, luthier at Knut Koupee music store in Minneapolis. The design was based on a bass guitar Prince used in the video for “Why you Wanna Treat me so bad”. The first cloud was white an played an important role in the Purple Rain movie.<\/p>\n
The cloud guitar features all maple construction and has a thru-neck. It is built using Gibson\u2019s 24.75\u201d scale length and has 22 medium\/jumbo frets with a 12\u201d radius on the fretboard. It is equipped with EMG<\/a> active pickups (an 81 humbucker at the bridge and an SA single coil in the neck position) and Schaller hardware \u2013 a tunomatic style \u2018457\u2019 bridge\/tailpiece and M6 machine heads. It has one volume control, one tone control and a 3-way switch. The fretboard is also painted (except for one black cloud that has appeared with a blank maple fretboard) . The fret markers are black dots, only the first white cloud has ‘symbol’\u00a0 (spade)\u00a0 fret markers. Other hardware: Jim Dunlop strap locks and a brass nut. The truss rod cover is also made from brass. All hardware is gold plated.
\nFrom what I found on the net, the neck appears to be very thin (thinner than a Ibanez wizard neck, with extreme low action). Also important to mention is that the bridge pick up has a little distance from the bridge, the Schecter copies have the pick up almost placed against the bridge.<\/p>\n