songs "the Question of U", there was so much tone and sustain in this guitar,.... he could hold those notes forever.
I knew, I had to have that guitar in my collection one day.

Still years where passing by, and this guitar was on top of my list, but was always got put aside since I had no clue how to do this.
The thing that scared me the most was the neck join and that cut away behind the fret board, how could I get a stable neck when there is so minimum wood to work with to set the neck into.

April 21st 2016, the day I found out about his passing and I was heartbroken and I was going through a really tough period.
Then it came to me….., building the C-model guitar is the opportunity to show my dedication, love & respect for Prince.
So somewhere in early June 2016 I started to collect all the parts and wood, so I could start building this guitar.

The body is made from 4 pieces of Alder wood and routed in different heights.
When you look at the body, you'll see 3 different levels in height, upper, middle and bottom.
Keeping the bottom as the main height, so it would all line up with the headstock.
So once the shape was drawn onto the wood, I started to trace out the overall shape first so I

kept a square where the bridge and tuners would end up, so they would still have the correct height without getting any fret buzz.
The low part has some nice contours that falls really well in your lap.
This is all one piece and goes all the way up until the curved horn and pearl shaped headstock.
The contour in this “horn” is done in a 42 degree angle on both sides, where the inside is at a straight 90 degree.

For the neck I used an original Ibanez GRG07LTD1 neck as a base to work from.
First I had to fill-up the existing tuning holes, since this would be turned into a headless neck.
From there I could draw the new neck shape at the top wood and saw it into the right shape.
Keeping in mind that the pearl head from the horn will follow up with the angle of the original headstock.

That was the easy part, now I had to prepare the neck heal to be shaped into its desired shape, for this I had to remove a few frets first, since I needed to saw most of it off.

For this I did all the work on the body first and once I was satisfied I glued and screwed the neck in his place.
The original neck was 24 frets, but I needed 26, so for this I added a little piece of extra fret board and shaped it into a nice looking end and glued it all together.

Once the glues was hardened I could saw the neck and the remaining wood from the body into that nice looking cute-away.

I didn’t want a standard white finish for this guitar, I figured it would be so much better if the finish had some little silver flakes in the paint.
So I contacted my painter and asked him if it was possible for him to

This worked really nice and makes this look complete, a huge thank you to Danny of Meubelspuiterij Halfweg for this amazing paint job.

I call it the pick guard but it basically holds both the pickups and electronics in its place.
Those plates where made by a good friend of my Roger Diodak, who owns a CNC routing machine.
For this I did some editing in Photoshop to get the correct dimensions and size to fit in the EMG Pickups I wanted to used for this.

Both plates are made from 2 mm thick - white “low gloss” hard plastic.
When I started to install the plates on the guitar, I used a metal isolation tape for the noise reducing.
Check out some more work of Roger Diodak, who can also do some amazing prince LED guitars.

Since the EMG set is an active pickups set, you need to install a 9v battery to support the pickups with power.

Normally the battery would be placed under the same plate as where all the electronic cables are,..but then when you have to change the battery,  you always have to open up the guitar and that is something I didn’t want.
So for this I placed a battery holder box in the back of the body, still I hope to find one day a similar box in white,...to make it more fitting with the overall look but for the time being this will be just fine.

Another little “modification” is the placement of the jack, where mine is at the side of the guitar, where it is placed at the bottom on the original guitar.

I only had this video from the Nude tour, there you could clearly see the first symbol version on it.
But there were little square plates in between of them,... and I had no idea what those symbolizes or what they
had printed on them.
And since those plates had this gloss/shine finish on them,.. the pictures or videos that I did find just got blurred
out by the lights.

I tried to recreated the strap in Photoshop first, starting with the old symbol as a base for it.
With the Symbol in the middle and an little “wave” border around it, the idea was born.
For those inner square plates (those that I could not determine from any picture), I had to come up with some
solution for this, and it was obvious to me that I had to keep them in the Lovesexy style, since this was the period
when I got introduced to this guitar.

I found this polyester gold shining fabric and I figured that this would be the backing base for those inner plates.
For this I also wanted to add a “contour” border around them, to give it a complete look and feel.

idea was born.
Now I could import those designs into my Janome digitizer embroidery software, made them look like an beveled 3D embroidery with a zig zag underlay so everything would really pop out.
Once it was done, I could export those to the Brother Innovis 800e embroidery machine.
The embroidery is done directly on a black low polyester fur and for the square I added that  square of gold fabric to really bring out the nice satin colors of Gold.

Since the design was too big for the embroidery hoop to fit in one time, I had to make it a split-double hoop design, so once part one was done, I had to re-hoop it and align it back in its places so the second part could be stitched on.

Once all the embroidery was done, I could attach it to a 2” inch polyester webbing with a sewing machine.
A length adjustment buckle was added plus on each side a leather strap end.
This was something I had made by a germane company, and they were so kind to stamp in the logo that I had designed for this, called the “Funky weapon Instrument strap”.

A little funny side note:
Most recently I received the “Paisley Park Archives – Exhibition series tour book” send by Kevin Gregory Jr.
Somewhere in the end of the book, there is a page with the straps Prince used on his guitars.
And there it was,..... for the first time, I got could have a clear look on what those square plates really where about,.....and I can tell you..... I could never have figures that out by myself.
A big think U 4 Kevin 4 getting me this book.

For people who are in a Prince Tribute band, or those who also own a Prince guitar (or any), I can make those straps and patches for you.
I’m working on a website for it www.funkyweaponinstrumentstraps.com
So check it out,... and let me know if I could help you with something.

For this guitar, I also wanted to make a special case and since the shape is different than any other guitar, a standard case would not do the job.
I found this case on a Dutch auction site,
I started with removing all the existing marital such as the fabric and foams.
I wanted to make something special for this guitar, so I started to look for some Purple short fur fabric, which I could put into my embroidery machine to stitch some nice logos on it.
In the middle you can read “Funky Weapon Instruments” and on each corner you'll see the Prince Symbol, all done in a Gold fabric.
The Purple fur fabric is attached to the new insides and foam to keep the guitar in place.
Now this guitar can come with me in a really save protected way

A funny little side story about this case is.... when I picked up this guitar case.... I had no idea from whom I was getting it from.
When I arrived and rang the sellers doorbell, I stood eye to eye with no other then André Borgman drummer of Robby Valentine and After Forever.
Thanks André.