“Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here together to get through this thing called life.”
My intention is to build a:
Five sting set neck bass.
"Cloud" shaped flame maple body
Sapelle neck, Birdseye maple fretboard
I can’t really say I’ve been a Prince fan my whole life. I can say many of my personal formative experiences as a human, as a musician, as a builder, and as an artist have had him if not central to the occasion, then at the very least proximate.
When he passed, like a great many, I was and still am heartsick. I took it as occasion to revisit his music. Over the years I’ve had many of his albums. Not all of them, as dude was Prolific, and some I’ve sold off. I decided to, at not insignificant expense, replace the albums I’ve misplaced along the way and pick up the ones I’ve missed.
I’ve joked, without much in the way of sarcasm, that it’s taken me longer to buy and listen to his albums than it took him to record them. Which for me is incredibly inspiring. But this is a build thread, not a discussion of his Royal Badness’s music (though I wouldn’t mind if a conversation spontaneously erupted).
Somewhere in the sad months that followed his passing, I decided that I would finally build the instrument I’ve always wanted to own. Sort of.
I’ve always kinda wanted a Cloud guitar. Except I don’t play much in the way of guitar. When I started building as a hobby, the Cloud guitar was always on the back burner. Like, when I got good enough. I collected, over the years, a great many anecdotes and specs and photos of various Cloud guitars, always looking for the proper inspiration. One of the things that blew my mind when I heard about it was that the Cloud guitar had originally been based upon, well... a bass. It apparently used to hang on the wall of the Glam Slam or something. The Original Cloud Bass was for a long time one of the unicorns of lutherie. Occasionally glimpsed on some old photo or dimly reflected upon in some obscure article. Nowadays, however, the OC has come to light.
I decided I would build a Cloud bass in honor not just of Prince, the man who made the design famous, but also to Jeffrey Levin, the man who originally created the design.
What I built (and to be fair at this point it’s pretty much done), was my own take on the design so I can claim very little of it, except for its mistakes, which are my own.
I’ve made some alterations to the design which are either aesthetic choices or errors in understanding. I hope you will be indulgent of my errors.
For attributions sake, please check out this blog article which has, as far as I can tell a pretty authoritative rundown of the early design of the original Cloud Bass.
Also, if you are into this sort of thing, the Cloud Bass is being played by Andre Simone in this
.
If by any chance you have a want to buy a Cloud Guitar please contact Dave Rusan, a luthier out of Minneapolis, who translated the OC to guitar and put it in the hands of the man who would use it to build his legend.
I arrived at the body shape by drawing it out in full size on graph paper and using some of the dimensions I found on the internet as a guide. I used a lot of photo reference to get at the shape. One of the things that has always tripped me up about the Cloud is kind of how weird it looks by itself. Like, some of the lines aren’t quite right, like they’re a little drawn out and strange. Of course, in Prince’s hands the guitar looks perfect. My goal, though it took me a while to arrive at it as such was to capture the duality of shape. If I got it, I’d know I was on the right track.
When I got the drawing at least close enough for my own tastes, I glued it to a bit a ¼” ply with a bit of spray adhesive.
I’d decided, for the body to go with what I’m calling a Purple Cloud Burst on 8/4” flame maple. Which is to say, three or four shades of purple wiped on in a method and execution I liken to the PRS Dragon Burst. But first you gotta start with the flame maple.
I jointed the boards with a clean finish table saw blade and glued it up.
I didn’t take a picture of the clean up step, or if I did I can’t seem to find it. After I glued up the board to make the blank I used a router planing fixture (similar to, if not stolen directly from the thread by @Bruce Johnson here at the LC.) to get me a flat and parallel top and bottom for the blank.
I cut out the Cloud shaped design template with the bandsaw and then cleaned up the edges with my Oscillating Spindle sander (which is seriously one of my favorite kinda super cheap tools.)
I traced the design onto my body blank and had at it with my bandsaw.
To unfortunate effect.
I’m glad I’ve been in this building game for a minute because I didn’t immediately freak out when I accidentally broke the bandsaw blade and split my body blank along the grain at a sensitive part of the top horn at the same time. Well, maybe I didn’t freak out, but I did nearly cry into my safety goggles and immediately questioned my self worth as a human being.
A split along the grain though, means if the pieces aren’t too jagged you can glue them up again and the damage gets hidden by the grain. I was very lucky.
On this day, Prince Rogers Nelson came into the world, and the world is a better place for his arrival. His music will always be our light.
My intention is to build a:
Five sting set neck bass.
"Cloud" shaped flame maple body
Sapelle neck, Birdseye maple fretboard
I can’t really say I’ve been a Prince fan my whole life. I can say many of my personal formative experiences as a human, as a musician, as a builder, and as an artist have had him if not central to the occasion, then at the very least proximate.
When he passed, like a great many, I was and still am heartsick. I took it as occasion to revisit his music. Over the years I’ve had many of his albums. Not all of them, as dude was Prolific, and some I’ve sold off. I decided to, at not insignificant expense, replace the albums I’ve misplaced along the way and pick up the ones I’ve missed.
I’ve joked, without much in the way of sarcasm, that it’s taken me longer to buy and listen to his albums than it took him to record them. Which for me is incredibly inspiring. But this is a build thread, not a discussion of his Royal Badness’s music (though I wouldn’t mind if a conversation spontaneously erupted).
Somewhere in the sad months that followed his passing, I decided that I would finally build the instrument I’ve always wanted to own. Sort of.
I’ve always kinda wanted a Cloud guitar. Except I don’t play much in the way of guitar. When I started building as a hobby, the Cloud guitar was always on the back burner. Like, when I got good enough. I collected, over the years, a great many anecdotes and specs and photos of various Cloud guitars, always looking for the proper inspiration. One of the things that blew my mind when I heard about it was that the Cloud guitar had originally been based upon, well... a bass. It apparently used to hang on the wall of the Glam Slam or something. The Original Cloud Bass was for a long time one of the unicorns of lutherie. Occasionally glimpsed on some old photo or dimly reflected upon in some obscure article. Nowadays, however, the OC has come to light.
I decided I would build a Cloud bass in honor not just of Prince, the man who made the design famous, but also to Jeffrey Levin, the man who originally created the design.
What I built (and to be fair at this point it’s pretty much done), was my own take on the design so I can claim very little of it, except for its mistakes, which are my own.
I’ve made some alterations to the design which are either aesthetic choices or errors in understanding. I hope you will be indulgent of my errors.
For attributions sake, please check out this blog article which has, as far as I can tell a pretty authoritative rundown of the early design of the original Cloud Bass.
Also, if you are into this sort of thing, the Cloud Bass is being played by Andre Simone in this
.
If by any chance you have a want to buy a Cloud Guitar please contact Dave Rusan, a luthier out of Minneapolis, who translated the OC to guitar and put it in the hands of the man who would use it to build his legend.
I arrived at the body shape by drawing it out in full size on graph paper and using some of the dimensions I found on the internet as a guide. I used a lot of photo reference to get at the shape. One of the things that has always tripped me up about the Cloud is kind of how weird it looks by itself. Like, some of the lines aren’t quite right, like they’re a little drawn out and strange. Of course, in Prince’s hands the guitar looks perfect. My goal, though it took me a while to arrive at it as such was to capture the duality of shape. If I got it, I’d know I was on the right track.
When I got the drawing at least close enough for my own tastes, I glued it to a bit a ¼” ply with a bit of spray adhesive.
I’d decided, for the body to go with what I’m calling a Purple Cloud Burst on 8/4” flame maple. Which is to say, three or four shades of purple wiped on in a method and execution I liken to the PRS Dragon Burst. But first you gotta start with the flame maple.
I jointed the boards with a clean finish table saw blade and glued it up.
I didn’t take a picture of the clean up step, or if I did I can’t seem to find it. After I glued up the board to make the blank I used a router planing fixture (similar to, if not stolen directly from the thread by @Bruce Johnson here at the LC.) to get me a flat and parallel top and bottom for the blank.
I cut out the Cloud shaped design template with the bandsaw and then cleaned up the edges with my Oscillating Spindle sander (which is seriously one of my favorite kinda super cheap tools.)
I traced the design onto my body blank and had at it with my bandsaw.
To unfortunate effect.
I’m glad I’ve been in this building game for a minute because I didn’t immediately freak out when I accidentally broke the bandsaw blade and split my body blank along the grain at a sensitive part of the top horn at the same time. Well, maybe I didn’t freak out, but I did nearly cry into my safety goggles and immediately questioned my self worth as a human being.
A split along the grain though, means if the pieces aren’t too jagged you can glue them up again and the damage gets hidden by the grain. I was very lucky.
On this day, Prince Rogers Nelson came into the world, and the world is a better place for his arrival. His music will always be our light.
