Prince's guitar strings: the Cloud guitar and Hohner Mad Cat rig, sourced

Prince Rogers Nelson (1958–2016) was an American singer, songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist from Minneapolis, Minnesota, who wrote, played, and often produced nearly every instrument on his own records. Signed to Warner Bros. Records at 18, he released his debut For You in 1978 and broke through with Dirty Mind (1980), Controversy (1981), and 1999 (1982) before Purple Rain (1984) made him the first artist in history to hold the number-one film, album, and single simultaneously in the United States. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004 and is commonly cited as having sold more than 100 million records worldwide, though estimates vary by source and methodology.

Guitar was one of at least a half-dozen instruments Prince played at a professional level, alongside keyboards, bass, and drums, and his lead and rhythm playing anchored records across funk, R&B, rock, and pop. His two most identifiable instruments, a custom white "Cloud" guitar and a battered Japanese-made Hohner "Mad Cat," both trace back to the late 1970s and early 1980s and stayed in his touring and studio rig for the next three decades.

GHS regular gauge .010–.046 on the Cloud guitars and Auerswald Model C, stepped up to GHS Boomers Medium .011–.050 on the Hohner Mad Cat. A fresh set went on before every gig, per his own guitar tech's account in a 1990 Musician magazine equipment report.

Two guitars carry the story. The Cloud came first, built for a movie. The Mad Cat became the workhorse.

The Cloud guitar was built in 1983 by Minneapolis luthier Dave Rusan at Knut Koupee Music, the repair shop Prince frequented, using leftover parts from a defunct guitar builder's "Shark" model. The white finish traces back to a bass built by Jeff Levin that Prince had bought years earlier, itself shaped after a Gibson F-style mandolin. Prince liked the guitar enough to commission several more for the Purple Rain tour, and by 1998 Schecter was producing licensed copies for retail.

The Mad Cat is a Hohner HG-490, a Telecaster-shaped guitar built in Japan by the Moridaira/Morris factory and fitted with Stratocaster-style pickups and bridge. Guitar World notes the bridge pickup sits closer to the bridge than a standard Strat or Tele, giving the guitar a more aggressive treble bite. Prince bought his original in the late 1970s and used it from the Dirty Mind era onward. Engineer Susan Rogers has said he preferred it over the Cloud guitar in the studio, and his guitar techs kept it road-worthy for decades, swapping in Fender Vintage Noiseless pickups and later Kinman units.

The gauge split between his guitars tracks their jobs. The lighter .010–.046 GHS set on the Cloud guitars and the Auerswald Model C matched their role as lead and rock-voice guitars for stage-filling riffs. The heavier .011–.050 set on the Hohner Mad Cat gave that guitar's brighter, more Strat-like pickups a firmer low end and cleaner sustain, useful for the clean rhythm and chordal work the Mad Cat was built for.

The EMG active pickups on the Cloud guitar (a single coil at the neck, a humbucker at the bridge) push a hotter, more consistent signal than the passive Stratocaster-style pickups on the Mad Cat. That's part of why the two guitars split cleanly into a dirty lead voice and a clean rhythm voice in his rig rather than overlapping.

Three things that mark Prince's guitar playing across the catalog:

1. Guitar as one voice among many. Prince wrote, arranged, and often played every instrument on his own records, and his guitar parts sit inside that same one-man-band logic rather than functioning as a standalone lead-guitar showcase. Rhythm and lead lines are frequently written to interlock with his own bass, keyboard, and drum-machine parts rather than sit on top of them.

2. Funk rhythm discipline. His rhythm guitar vocabulary leans on tightly muted, syncopated funk comping, sometimes called "chicken scratch," layered under his own falsetto vocal lines rather than a separate lead singer.

3. The 2004 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame solo. At George Harrison's posthumous induction, Prince joined Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, Steve Winwood, and Dhani Harrison for a rendition of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and took an extended solo that closed the performance, ending with him tossing his guitar into the air as he walked off stage. Guitar Player has called it one of the greatest guitar solos of all time.

The core instruments, sourced from Guitarcloud's Prince equipment archive and a 1990 Musician magazine tour report.

The two documented gauges, split by guitar role. Same GHS family, different gauge for a heavier, brighter-pickup guitar.