When construction began on Prince’s third Cloud guitar at Minneapolis’ Knut Koupée Music Store in the winter of 1984, Prince had embarked on a 24-week tour across North America to promote the soundtrack for his now iconic film, Purple Rain. The album dominated the charts, spending 24 weeks at number 1 on the Billboard 200 and selling over 25 million copies worldwide. The film and subsequent tour also introduced a guitar that would become emblematic of this era in Prince’s career: the Cloud Guitar, a custom guitar that embodied the artist’s singular sense of style.

Each of the four original Cloud Guitars that Knut Koupée made between 1983-1985 is unique, with slight variances in construction details, different colors of paint layered on top of each other over slightly different bodies, and bearing the evidence of repairs (Prince was notoriously hard on his guitars) made throughout the 80s and early 90s. Cloud 3 (or, C3 as the technicians noted) received surprisingly few of these repairs, as shown on the CT scan performed by Julian’s Auctions.

The CT scan on Cloud 3 showed us what we had thought; the guitar neck was originally made at the O’Hagan Guitar factory, a Minnesota guitar manufacturer whose remaining inventory was purchased by Knut Koupée in early 1983 after the company went out of business. All four of the original Knut-made Cloud Guitars were manufactured with O’Hagan’s neck-through body three-piece guitar necks that extend down into the entire body area where the pickups are located. In total, Cloud 3 has a seven-piece body: the original O’Hagan three-piece neck, two of the original O’Hagan sides glued to the neck, and two maple “wings” added to those sides to create the unique body shape of the Cloud Guitar. These features are also evident on the CT scans of Cloud 1 and 2.

O’Hagan used metal pin locators for gluing the fingerboards, also evident on Cloud 3. The internal neck truss rod on Cloud 3 is Japanese-made and uncommon on American made guitars from the period, but is evident on this and the other Knut-made Clouds as well as other O’Hagan Guitars. The internal routing for the pickup wires is unique in O’Hagan construction and is found on Cloud 3. The humbucking pickup rout shapes are also unique to O’Hagan, again found on Cloud 3. The neck pickup humbucking rout was filled and rerouted for a smaller, single coil EMG pickup on Cloud 3, which is also found on the CT scan of Cloud 1 and 2.

The CT scan showed surprisingly little repaired damage, and that the full neck and headstock are original. The tuner holes on Cloud 3 have been doweled with wood and new holes were drilled for the tuners due to the unique design of the Cloud headstock, also evident on the CT scan of Cloud 1 at Smithsonian. Cloud 1 was made from an O’Hagan “Shark” model guitar, and Clouds 2 and 3 were made from O’Hagan “Nightwatch” guitars. The Nightwatch had a traditional symmetrical 3+3 tuner layout on the headstock, whereas the Shark 3+3 tuners were offset from each other.

Externally, identifying features include the 13-degree headstock angle and 25” scale length O’Hagan Guitars used, both of which were uncommon in that era of guitar manufacturing. The original O’Hagan inlayed fingerboard dots were apparent in the CT scan and their outlines can be seen at the 12th fret position marker. A dry-transfer decal with the number “3” was placed on the truss cover at one time but has since been rubbed away, similar to Cloud 4. It is faint but still visible under specific lighting conditions.

The paint layers on Cloud 3 follow the same pattern as Cloud 1, with the original white finish appearing in areas of the cavity routs as well as the bridge post bushings. Like Clouds 2-4, it was originally painted with acrylic lacquer in white by Knut employee Mark Sampson. Due to paint bonding issues, Knut employee Barry Haugen stripped the white finish on this and the other Clouds in order to use an acrylic urethane for its shorter drying time, as Prince often needed these guitars within a matter of days. Cloud 3 still has the Sign ‘O The Times peach-era finish underneath the current Diamonds and Pearls-era yellow finish.

It should be noted that out of the four original Cloud guitars the top finish as left by Prince is as follows; Cloud 1 is yellow, Cloud 2 is dark blue, Cloud 3 is yellow and Cloud 4 is black.

What’s most evident are the multiple layers of paint on C3, with each layer telling its story. From Purple Rain/Parade tour White, to Sign ‘O The Times/Lovesexy tour Peach, and into the Diamonds and Pearls era and its current Lemon Yellow Shimrin finish. C3 was prominently used by Prince on his 1988 Lovesexy tour across America, where its distinctive deeper input jack swirl, scroll work, bridge location and headstock details are evident in photos from that period.

C3 was photographed in its current yellow finish at Prince’s reported 100-million-dollar record contract signing with Warner Bros. on August 31st, 1992. Prince soon learned that Warners had conflicting expectations and the following year, Prince changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol in an attempt to rebel against Warners and divorce himself from his past.

Along with the name change, Prince gave away three of his four original Cloud guitars in 1993, including Cloud 1 to the Smithsonian American History Museum where it is permanently housed. C3, which was given away by Prince in a WHTZ FM contest in 1993, is the only one of the subsequent three Clouds made after C1 that bears the same paint layers as C1. While many other Cloud guitars have been made by different builders from 1993 to today, Cloud 3 remains a time capsule from what many consider to be Prince’s most recognizable era.

John Woodland has done conservation work on Prince’s guitar collection at Paisley Park off and on since 2018. He traveled to the Smithsonian in 2019 to perform a CT scan on the Cloud Guitar that Prince donated to them in 1993. Woodland is currently working on a book titled “Look Up in the Air: The Story of Prince’s Cloud Guitars” along with former Knut Koupée employee, Gerald Ronning.