The Symbol guitar was originally built by German luthier Jerry Auerswald. The first one was painted gold and was made from antique maple. This guitar has a neck-thru construction with 24 frets. It uses the 24.75” scale length and has the same EMG pickups as the Cloud guitar. Jerry made the bridge for this guitar himself as he makes his own hardware. Again, this guitar is equipped with Schaller M6 machine heads with custom-made tuning buttons.

There were two copies of the Symbol guitar made by one of Prince’s guitar technicians. One was white and the other was black. These were made from mahogany and didn’t last too long! Prince has a nasty habit of throwing his guitar way up in the air and letting them crash onto the stage. If you look closely at pictures of the white Symbol you can see that the lower horn has been snapped off and glued back on. The part of the guitar is very delicate – especially when made from mahogany (a short-grained wood).

Subsequent symbol guitars – namely the purple ‘Habibi’ models were built by the American wing of Shecter Guitar Research. There are two versions – the most recent one having a Floyd Rose vibrato system. This is a first for a Prince guitar. Prince’s guitar tech, Takumi, told me that he stripped down the Auerswald Symbol and sent all the measurements to Shecter. These are the guitars that Prince currently uses on stage.