Tommy Shaw - Taylor Guitars

SERVICE Spotlight
The Paisley
Prince Guitar
Built for a late ’80s Prince tour that
never happened, this eye-catching
Grand Concert was recently restored
to prime playing form
When this paisley Taylor
A-12ce arrived at the factory for service
in late 2010, we recognized it
as a one-off made for Prince in the
late ’80s. Taylor had started making
maple guitars with translucent
color finishes in 1984 (thanks to
the experiments of Taylor’s Larry
Breedlove), which led to a purplestained
maple Jumbo 12-string made
on spec for Prince after a discussion
between Kurt Listug and Glenn
Wetterlund from Podium Music, a
Taylor dealer in Minneapolis. The
purple guitar became a minor plot
point in Taylor lore when the guitar
was featured in a couple of Prince
videos, including “Raspberry Beret,”
albeit without the Taylor logo in
the headstock due to an anti-brand
stipulation by Prince.
The purple guitar helped stimulate
greater interest in colored
acoustic guitars among electric-playing
rockers who liked the flashier,
more modern look, especially for the
stage or in music videos, and who
were eager to separate the acoustic
guitar from its sepia-toned folk
heritage. Other established artists
were soon placing orders for colored
acoustics from Taylor (including
Alabama’s Jeff Cook and Billy Idol
guitarist Steve Stevens), prompting
us to introduce our color-stained
maple Artist Series in 1985.
The paisley guitar was commissioned
for Prince by Wetterland in
1988 to match a new black-andwhite
paisley design motif Prince
had embraced as he geared up for
a major European tour. But when a
bomb exploded on Pan Am Flight
103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in
December of that year, Prince canceled
his tour, and the guitar would
languish in limbo. Wetterlund eventually
acquired the guitar, and it was
later sold at a guitar auction.
The cutaway Grand Concert’s
maple back and sides feature a
translucent black finish, while the
soundboard and headstock showcase
a screen printed paisley design.
Note the missing logo from the
headstock, the original “Artist Series”
fretboard inlays, and the Taylor “smiley”
bridge pin arrangement that was
used at that time. An after-market
pickup, an L.R. Baggs AGP-2, had
also been installed.
The guitar’s current owner, Mark
Henkin, from New York City, filled us
in on how it came to be his.
“A friend of mine was at a charity
auction in New York, learned that the
guitar was made for Prince, offered
a bid, and ended up taking it home,”
he says. “He doesn’t play guitar — he
just thought it was a cool thing to
have. Essentially, I took it from him
about five years ago,” he laughs. “I
said, ‘You don’t play guitar, so I’m
keeping this.’”
Henkin says he’s not a “guitar
freak,” but mainly a living room player
who owns a few guitars and enjoys
jamming with friends.
“One of my friends is a guitar
aficionado who owns 70 guitars, and
after messing around with this one,
he said, ‘This is a really, really good
guitar.’ He told me to do it right, so I
sent it to you guys.”
After more than 20 years, the
guitar displayed visible symptoms
of extreme dryness: The bridge,
fretboard extension and binding had
begun to separate from the body
due to shrinkage. There also were
cracks in the finish. Taylor repair
technician Dave Staudte filled the
cracks with cyanoacrylate glue,
straightened the fretboard extension
by heating it and clamping it flat,
reglued the binding, replaced the
bridge, repaired the bridge pin plate,
and cleaned and dressed the frets.
Henkin was duly impressed when
the guitar was returned to him.
“It looks cool and sounds fantastic,”
he says. “Everyone who sees it
comments on it.”