Fender Stratocaster

The Fender Stratocaster is an electric guitar used by Prince and Dez Dickerson. Some of the earliest photographs of Prince in the studio show him playing white and sunburst Stratocasters. Prince played on the Prince album[1] and it is likely that Prince used one on the For You too. In 1980, Prince began using his famous Hohner Madcat, which incorporated Stratocaster pickups in a Telecaster body. In the studio, Prince was still using a Stratocaster for the Controversy sessions.[2]

Prince used a standard Stratocaster again on the One Nite Alone tour. In the mid-2000s, Prince used customised Fender Stratocasters. These had been modified to remove the middle pickup and replaced the neck and bridge pickups with single coil and humbucker EMGs. This configuration is like the pickups in the Dave Rusan Cloud guitar. The controls were also stripped down to a volume and tone control and the guitars were fitted with a Floyd-Rose tremolo system and locking nut. The orange guitar also had a wood-grain pickguard and matching control knobs. These guitars were used for rhythm guitar playing [3] .

Prince played the orange and light blue Stratocasters during the Musicology and Earth tours. He played the light blue Stratcaster during the Superbowl performance in 2007 and it became water damaged. He later used a purple Stratocaster with the same customisations. Another stock light blue Stratocaster was also kept as a backup but never used[4] .

The orange, purple and two light blue Stratocasters are in the collection at Paisley Park and appear in the Prince - Guitar & Bass book.

Dez Dickerson also used a sunburst Fender Stratocaster on the 1999 tour.