Prince Mad Cat

I remember it so well, It was the year 1982 and I must have been 9 years old or something,..... and I was just watch my favourite Dutch music program called Top-Pop on our television.
The presenters name was Ad Visser and he introduced the next artist/song as “the new artist on the block, with a unusual name but which you’ll never forget again.” Prince with 1999.
This was my very first introduction to Prince’s music and I was blown away by the sound of it.
There was something about it that I have never heard before, those repeating rim shots really got my attention, and then Prince came on stage with his Hohner Telecast.

For sure Ad Visser was right,...I will never forget again.....and my love for Prince was born.
This was the year that I had my first Prince Vinyl record and many followed.
It was in the video clip “Let’s Go Crazy” when Prince surprised me again, and it was the solo at the end of that song, that screaming note.....Goosebumps everywhere and I said to my parents “one day....I will have that guitar and play like that!”

Well,...years gone by, and never really found one.
There were a lot of copy cat, but they never really sounded like the real deal, so the guitar ended up on my ‘to build” list.
After Prince’s passing in April 21st 2016, I therapeutically started to build the C-model guitar, Microphone Guns and the Purpleaxxe Keytar,...and now it was also time to add this to my collection.

It still took me a while but in early April 2017 I found a company who was making those custom Prince guitars and since I had read some promising stories about this guitar, so I ordered one for myself.
Once the guitar was delivered, I had to modify/upgrade some part to a better standard look and feel.
Once it was finished I was blown away by its sound,..and again another master piece was added to my Prince Guitar Collection.


	Neck: Inlay: Body: Fret Neck: Middle: Bridge: Switch: Bridge: Nut:


	Flamed Maple C-profile Tele style Striped Walnut and flamed Ash top Black Dots 6100 Wilkinson Alnico Vintage Single Coil None Wilkinson Alnico Vintage Single Coil 3 way Toggle switch Hardtail fixed Plastic Cream






	Different types of wood are used to make this telecaster shaped body. The main base is a 2 piece flamed maple with a striped walnut in the center, plus a book matched flamed ash top and back. the body is bounded with a black plastic binding and both the front and the back. This combination gives the guitar its own flavour of sound, if fits really well for any type of playing. The finish is done with a 4 layers nitrocellulose transparent lacquer that really pops out the flamed lines from wood and finished in a Natural high polished gloss.






	The two pickups are Wilkinson Alnico Vintage style single coils. They give this bright clean sound with a raspy blues color to the tone. The uniqueness if found in the way how this is wired to the 3-way pickups selector. First position gives the bridge pickup, middle both and the 3rd gives you the neck pickup.... so far nothing strange and this done like any other traditional pickup wiring. But things start to happen when you are in middle position. There is a capacitor added to this switch middle selection, which is not only giving you a nice blend between both neck and bridge pickup, but it also reacts on you articulation of you picking. So when your picking is harder, the neck pickup stands out in the mix, when your picking is softer the bridge is more in the mix, this really gives some nice flavor to the tone. This works really great and fits on any style playing for both clean and distorted/overdriven sound. For both pickups I changed the cover caps for aesthetic cosmetic purpose. Still there was something else that also needed to be done and that was the wire compartment isolation, for ground-noise reducing on both the pickup and electronics end, I found out that this wasn't done when I wanted to upgrade the pickguard plate.


	The modification that I wanted to do on this guitar as the decal that was already on this guitar. The one that was one now, was really blurry and had some misprinting on it, plus the edges were not aligned

with each other and became unreadable.
When you take a look at the logo, you see this Cat shaped tail shapes and I believe that “font” was custom made for the H.S Anders Mad Cat original decal.
So with the fonts that I could find that was the closeted to the original, I started to Photoshop my own decal.
Placed every letter in the right position, so I would fit the curve of the headstock.
Once done, I send the example to a water slide Decal in Australia and asked if he could use this for printing.
In the time that I had to wait for the printed decal to made and shipped, I started to clean up and remover the old existing decal.
For this I used nail polish remover to make a nice and clean surface, so now I could place the new water slide decal in its place and finish it with a 4 layers nitrocellulose transparent lacquer.
While cleaning and preparing the headstock for its new finish I found out that from the factory, the neck fretboard was completely done with this nitrocellulose transparent lacquer, but it was also done on the frets them self, so before I could do anything I needed this to be cleaned first.

Recently I found out about his amazing product line from “Music Nomad – Equipment Care Products”.
So now I could really put them to the test, and I started with the “Frine Fret Polishing kit tools” to clean up the fret and remove their nitrocellulose lacquer layer
Once this was done I could polish everything with the wax, clean up and polishing products from Music Nomad, with those I was able to make them clean and shine again.
For reinstalling the tuning system heads, I used another great Music Nomad product called “the Octopus”, which is a 8 in 1 multi functional tool, that could slide easy over the screw nuts for the tuning systems.
I always used a pliers to do this, but somehow I always damage the screws a little,.. with the Music Nomad - Octopus that is impossible to do, since it’s made of a solid hard plastic
Those Music Nomad tools and products made this so much easier, so check out their products...I guarantee you,....It will make things so much easier for you....

The pickguard that came with the guitar originally was made from a extremely pore 4 layered plastic with some fake top that suppose to look like some tortoise red material or something.
It had no beveled edges, and the bridge pickguard was cut to short, so there was a gap between the bridge and pickguard and you could clearly see where they start cutting it, im sure this wasn’t made by any CNC machine.
Those beveled edges I could fix myself, since I had made some pickguard before that shouldn't be a problem, but that fake tortoise red material was just hideous.


	The first thing I did was going on Google to do some research on what material was originally used for the Prince Hohner guitars. at the top of the page there was a company called “Scratch-it!” in the United Kingdom. They had those original turtle pickguard material plates in the exact shape and form like the original Prince Pickguard, I contacted them hoping they could help me out with one.

They provided me with some templates, so I could test fitting on the dimensions.
I didn't ask for this, but in the final template what they have send me, they also kept in mind to cover that gap between the bridge and original plate... and this was so much better looking.
So a few days later the pickguard was delivered and I could start placing it on the guitar.
They were also nice to make me a cover plate for the jack in the same turtle material, the one that was on the guitar originaly was a standard was a chrome plated one.


	Not bad looking, but the one they made me was so much better and really competed that uniform look, so a big thank you goes out to Tim from Scratch-it!


	Over the years Prince used different type of guitar straps, especially in his later years. Those straps were a work of art by them self, however the one that


	people remember the most is his iconic Cheetah guitar strap, this was the strap he was also using in those early 1999 days on his Hohner telecaster. So when I started to make my own guitar strap for the C-model guitar, I also started the make on for this Mad Cat guitar.

To make this, I used a 5” nylon polyester webbing, and with a sewing machine I did a full wrap of a low fur polyester velvet Cheetah Fabric.
This feels really comfortable since the fabric is extremely soft and doesn't irritates your skin.
Once I posted some of the pictures, I got received some question and requests if I was able to make the strap Prince used on his Purple Symbol guitar during the Super bowl halftime show.

So now I am able to make a few different models with all sorts of different embroidery patterns on it.
I could also make some custom design and embroidery for some friends.
So if I could help you with your very own custom made guitar strap(s) (and not only Prince related),..... just let me know.


	So there it is,… another Prince guitar in my Purple Harem Guitar collection, slowly I'm getting them all. And I'm really happy how this turned out 2 B another great guitar. Next up is making a guitar case for this,… which will be uploaded once I am done. The strings on this is a Ernie Ball Super Slinky: .042, .032, .024, .016, .011 and .009 I wanna say thank you to Tim from Scratch-it! for the amazing new Pickguard and to Andy from Guitarlogoz for making me the wonderful new water slide decal. Thank U guys.


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