In 2007, I built my own guitar as a tribute to my favorite guitarist, Prince. I carefully researched the pickups and construction of his Cloud guitar in an effort to match the Cloud sound, but in a Stratocaster form factor. I believe I succeeded-- my finished "Purple Rain" guitar features EMG active pickups that exactly match Prince's pickups, a maple body, Original Floyd Rose tremolo, and a painted neck with painted "love symbol" fret markers. Gold Schaller hardware throughout, with a pickup selector, volume and tone dials, and a small unused switch that was intended for a glowing LED panel that I never actually used. The guitar has purplish blue metallic automotive paint and is a reasonably close match to the dark blue Cloud guitar actually used by Prince. I personally saw one dark blue Cloud guitar at Paisley Park in 2019, and the color is pretty close. Unfortunately, I cannot play guitar and never will-- I've taken lessons and I simply fail because of a lack of time to practice, among other reasons. It is the most frustrating thing in the world to be able to build a guitar like this and not be able to play it.
Features:
Custom maple body built in 2006 by Mojo Bodies.
Warmoth neck with gold-look frets. Because fretting a guitar was beyond my skill level at that time, I simply painted over the frets and then scraped off the paint (lol). It still turned out well!
Original Floyd Rose tremolo in gold
Schaller gold hardware
The color is Interlagos Blue Metallic with a matte finish, and it takes automotive wax really well. I love the metallic flecks in the maple grain.
This was for my personal use, but I've had some purchase inquiries and I might be getting back into this. If so, I will aim a little higher on the finished product and make it actually saleable.
Audio samples (clean, no effects, 44.1 mono WAV) and high resolution photos are on the project page here: https://www.raellic.com/guitars/Purple-Rain/
Features:
Custom maple body built in 2006 by Mojo Bodies.
Warmoth neck with gold-look frets. Because fretting a guitar was beyond my skill level at that time, I simply painted over the frets and then scraped off the paint (lol). It still turned out well!
Original Floyd Rose tremolo in gold
Schaller gold hardware
The color is Interlagos Blue Metallic with a matte finish, and it takes automotive wax really well. I love the metallic flecks in the maple grain.
This was for my personal use, but I've had some purchase inquiries and I might be getting back into this. If so, I will aim a little higher on the finished product and make it actually saleable.
Audio samples (clean, no effects, 44.1 mono WAV) and high resolution photos are on the project page here: https://www.raellic.com/guitars/Purple-Rain/
