Prince is for me the reason why I wanted to play guitar in the first place, I was listening to his music for years and I collected a big CD collection.
The only thing that was missing in my collection was a Prince guitar.
Prince had always some unique look to all of his guitars, like the Cloud guitar in Purple Rain and the Model C guitar which he used on his Love Sexy and Nude tour.
And once Prince changed his name in this unpronounceable symbol, he also designed a guitar in that same symbol.
So once I was starting to make some guitars my self, I made this Prince Symbol guitar in 2005.

Since there was no blue-print/work plans available for this guitar, I had to make one my self.
I had this little poster from some guitar magazine which I could use, for this I use a copy machine to make a 1:1 size template.
For the body it self, I glued 4 pieces of maple together and used the template to draw the shape to the symbol on the wood.
From there I could start by cutting out the symbol shape and take a closer look to all the leveled parts, starting with the Symbol Horn.

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

Custom Jetking
Gold symbol inlay
5 piece maple Metallic purple
Medium frets
Dimarzio HS-3 single Coil
None
Dimarzio Humbucker from Hell
Toggle switch
Gotoh fixed
Purple Plastic

To shape the horn, I used the Dremel power tool with a metal edge sander.
For this I drew the rosette shape on both sides of the horn and sand and shape it little by little.
For the smaller parts, I used a piece of sandpaper for a clean edge inside the rosette.

On the outside edge of the horn there was this rounded shape, for this I use the same tool to start with and once it was in some nicer form I rapped a piece of sandpaper around it and started to make a nice clean rounding’s over the whole horn.

The upper part of the horn had to be leveled, and this took me a while to get it done the right way since a lot of wood had to be removed.
To clean the horn, I took a 1200 Grid sandpaper and cleaned everything I overlooked the first time.

Where the pickups would come, I had to route some space for the first gold pickguard so that once the bridge was added….I would still have a nice low action on the bridge and strings.
From there I started to route the neck pocket and electronics spacing’s.
Around the body I made this heart shaped binding type, and the extra heart routed behind the bridge.

For the pickups I needed to make some pickguard in which the pickups could be mounted.
I found some gold mirror pickguard material on eBay and this would work great on this guitar.
I started with the inner pickguard, which is just a round plate holding the bridge and bridge pickup.
For this I used my Jem temple as a guide to draw the pickup spacing.
The pickup and bridge where mounted in there own pickguard material ring.
For this I made some Photoshop design, did a print out and did the drawing on the mirror material.
The same for the single coil ring and truss rod cover.
For the single coil and humbucker ring cutout, I used the pickup covers as a guide line to draw the parts that I had to remove; I did the same for the bridge cover.
I sanded all the edges of the pickguard, drilled the screw and string holes and all was ready for mounting.

Since I used an original neck for this project, I needed to come up with some cool idea for the inlay for this guitar.
My dad was able to print me some stickers in the Symbol shape which I could use to make me some nice dot makings.
First I sealed all the frets, and spray-painted the whole neck in the white base paint, then for each spot where the symbol would be added, I spray-painted that aria with gold.

Once this was dry, I could place those symbol stickers over the gold painted spots on the fretboard.
And I sprayed the whole neck in this Purple metallic paint, and left it out to dry.

When this was done, I could remover the stickers again to reveal the gold color which now turned out to be a symbol shape inlay.
I also removed the tape over the frets, and did a recover of them before I would apply the clear coat to the whole neck.
While this was drying I started to paint the body.

The same base white paint was applied first in 2 layers of paint, when it was dry I took a 1200 Grid sandpaper to smooth out the surface before it was ready for its 1 layer or purple metallic.
At the end I had 4 layers of purple metallic and now the body was ready for its final layers of clear coat.
When it was applied and dry, I could start to polish the whole body and neck and I could start mounting everything together.

To reshape the head stock of the original Ibanez Jetking neck, I used a little piece of maple wood.
I first did a drawing of the symbol head shape and over that I did a draw of the Jetking head.
With this I know that once I routed the Jetking head in this piece of maple, I could fit the head inside the routing, glue it and cut it into the new shape of the symbol head stock.

For this I worked up-side-down, so that once every thing was done the upper part would be as clean as possible.
All I needed to do was filling out the original tuning holes by adding some wood filler, to make the surface smooth again.
Once the filler was dry, I could re-drill the new tuning
holes in the head stock and I started at the upper part which still had to be leveled.

In the original Prince Symbol guitar, you’ll find a black EMG pickup set.
I could go for the same set, but I wanted to try something different.
I found a set of a Dimarzio Humbucker from hell, and the HS-3 single coil.
For both I added a gold metallic cover and added it to the pickups and place everything in the body.
This was all ready looking great with all the mirror gold pickguard materials added to the body.
This turned out to be great, especially when you see it in combination with the color I had in mind for the finished guitar.

The Gold mirror pickguard really brings out the beauty of this guitar.
I added the Dimarzio Purple strap and a set of 0.10, 0.13, 0.17, 0.30, 0.42, and 0.52 strings.
On the strap I added a little Prince symbol Pin, which I found in eBay, just for fun.
The guitar looks amazing.

This is the spot where you would expect the video about this guitar, but since I no longer have this guitar, I am unable to make the video for it.
Now days, I am working on a new Prince Symbol Guitar and this will be the Gold version.

The guitar is making good progress, and I added some nice custom made Dimarzio Cliplock Gold guitar strep for it.
So keep your eyes open, because I will make a video from it.