Prince Teal 'Cloud' Guitar

A guitar shaped like a cloud

The Cloud began in 1983 in Minneapolis. Prince hired Knut-Koupee Enterprises, the local guitar shop and repair business he used, to build an instrument whose swooping shape came from an unusual bass. The Smithsonian credits the inspiration to a bass designed in 1972 by Jeff Levin of Sardonyx Guitars; the original builder, Dave Rusan, has said he suspects it was a Sardonyx belonging to Prince's childhood friend and bassist Andre Cymone, while Cymone has thought it might have been a Spector.

Rusan built the first Clouds from hard rock maple in a neck-through-body design with 22 frets and a 24 3/4-inch scale, fitted with EMG active pickups. He made four: three for Prince and one for a record-company contest giveaway. The originals were painted white and appeared in Prince's 1984 film Purple Rain.

The shape stuck. Prince had Clouds repainted to match each new era, peach for Sign o' the Times in 1987 and later yellow, and kept commissioning new ones. The Smithsonian holds one of the originals, a gift from Paisley Park Enterprises.

Andy Beech and the later Clouds

Later Clouds came from other builders, including Schecter and Andy Beech, who made this teal guitar and wrote the letter of authenticity that accompanied it at its 2017 sale. Reports of the sale said Beech made 31 guitars for Prince in all; a profile of Rusan puts Beech's output at 27 Cloud copies in the 1990s. The figures may count different things, and neither source breaks them down.

Prince used the teal Cloud in the late 1980s and into the 1990s, onstage, in the studio and for publicity photographs. A photograph published with one report of the sale shows him playing it in Minnesota in 1988, which suggests this particular guitar predates the 1990s output credited to Beech; the sources do not settle when it was built.

On the back is an inventory label reading 'Property of PRN Music Corp', with a phone number and the number 'PM 16164'.

Prince at his peak

The years the teal Cloud was in use were among Prince's most prolific. Lovesexy came out on May 10, 1988. His Batman soundtrack, released June 20, 1989, went to number one on the Billboard 200 and sold 4.3 million copies. Diamonds and Pearls followed on October 1, 1991, and sold more than two million copies in the United States.

In 1993, in the middle of a dispute with his record company over how often he could release music, he changed his stage name to an unpronounceable symbol. The teal Cloud left his hands the next year.

On January 17, 1994, a magnitude 6.7 earthquake struck beneath the San Fernando Valley, killing 57 people, injuring more than 8,700 and causing damage estimated between $13 billion and $50 billion. Prince donated this guitar that year to an auction benefiting Los Angeles earthquake relief.

From a charity sale to a record

After the 1994 charity sale the guitar spent more than two decades out of public view. Prince died at Paisley Park in Chanhassen, Minnesota, on April 21, 2016, at 57, and interest in his instruments surged. A yellow Cloud sold at auction in 2016 for $137,500, then reported as the record for a Prince guitar; one later report put that earlier record at $187,000 instead.

The teal Cloud came back to market at a Los Angeles auction on a Saturday in early November 2017, with an estimate of $60,000 to $80,000. It sold for $700,000, nearly nine times the high estimate, and was reported as the most ever paid for one of Prince's guitars. The buyer was not identified.

For a sense of scale, a rhinestone glove of Michael Jackson's sold at the same auction for $102,000, and an authorized replica Cloud was being sold through Paisley Park at the time for $1,750.

How to know a Cloud

Every Cloud shares the same flamboyantly fluid silhouette, borrowed from that 1970s bass. On the original in the Smithsonian, fretboard markers combining male and female symbols were added later.

What separates one Cloud from another is color, builder and paperwork. This one is teal blue, built by Beech, carries the PRN Music Corp inventory label with its 'PM 16164' number and came with the builder's letter. Its 1994 charity sale is itself part of its provenance, since it documents that the guitar left Prince's hands directly.

The silhouette of an artist

Prince sold more than 100 million records, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004, and played the Super Bowl halftime show in Miami on February 4, 2007, before an estimated 140 million viewers.

Of all his instruments, the Cloud is the one most people can draw from memory. The teal example's $700,000 result showed how much collectors were willing to pay for that shape when it came with a clear line back to the man himself.

The numbers

Cloud design origin

1983, Knut-Koupee, Minneapolis; first builder Dave Rusan

Original Cloud construction

Hard rock maple, neck-through-body, 22 frets, 24 3/4-inch scale, EMG active pickups

Original Rusan Clouds

4 built: 3 for Prince, 1 for a contest giveaway

This guitar's use

Late 1980s into the 1990s; photographed onstage in Minnesota in 1988

Prince, era albums

Lovesexy (1988), Batman (1989, No. 1, 4.3 million sold), Diamonds and Pearls (1991)

Timeline

1. Jun 7, 1958

   Prince Rogers Nelson is born in Minneapolis.

2. 1983

   Knut-Koupee in Minneapolis builds the first Cloud guitar for Prince.

3. 1984

   Purple Rain is released, with the white Cloud on screen.

4. 1987

   An original Cloud is repainted peach for the Sign o' the Times era.

5. 1988

   Prince is photographed playing the teal Cloud in Minnesota.

6. 1993

   Prince changes his stage name to a symbol during a dispute with his record company.

7. Jan 17, 1994

   The Northridge earthquake strikes Los Angeles.

8. 1994

   Prince donates the teal Cloud to an auction benefiting Los Angeles earthquake relief.

9. Apr 21, 2016

   Prince dies at Paisley Park, age 57.

10. 2016

    A yellow Cloud sells at auction for $137,500.

11. Nov 2017

    The teal Cloud sells for $700,000 at auction in Los Angeles against a $60,000-$80,000 estimate.

The world in 1994

• Jan 17, 1994

  A magnitude 6.7 earthquake hits Northridge in the San Fernando Valley, killing 57.

• Apr 8, 1994

  Kurt Cobain is found dead at his Lake Washington home.

• Jun 17, 1994

  O.J. Simpson's white Ford Bronco chase is broadcast live.

• Jun 17, 1994

  The FIFA World Cup opens in the United States at Soldier Field in Chicago.

• Aug 12, 1994

  Major League Baseball players go on strike; the World Series is canceled.

• Nov 8, 1994

  Republicans win control of both houses of Congress.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Prince Teal 'Cloud' Guitar is number 81 of 100 in the memorabilia entries of the FLOAT 100. 100 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (79 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• The Cloud's shape was borrowed from a bass guitar, and even its first builder isn't certain which make.
• Prince repainted his original Clouds to match new eras: white for Purple Rain, then peach, then yellow.
• This guitar's first sale was a charity auction, which Prince supplied himself after the 1994 Los Angeles earthquake.
• It sold for $700,000 against a high estimate of $80,000.
• An inventory tag on the back still reads 'Property of PRN Music Corp' with the number 'PM 16164'.
• One of the original Clouds is in the Smithsonian, a gift from Paisley Park Enterprises.