Publication: Minneapolis Star Tribune [US]
Date: December 22, 1998
Section: C.J.
Page Number(s): 4B
Length: 963 words
Title: "Soured Deal With Prince Has Guitar Man Fretting; Minneapolis Instrument Maker Is Worried That His Reputation May Be In Jeopardy"
Written By: Cheryl Johnson

Oh, the riffs that Chicago's Ferdinand Pickett could swap with Minneapolis guitar mechanic Mitchell Rath about their guitar forays with Prince. Barring a settlement, a trial early next year will decide Pickett's lawsuit against Prince for allegedly performing with a glyph-design guitar that sure looked like the one Pickett made for him, without payment or credit. Rath's Princely beef is a little different. He was actually paid $ 4,000 with a check signed by none other than Mayte Garcia Nelson. But that's a lot less than he expected. Rath, owner of the Diner Guitar Shop on Hennepin Avenue, was approached in the summer of 1997 by Prince's Paisley Park Studios about making 12 "cloud" guitars. "You probably have seen 'Purple Rain'? That's the one his girlfriend gets him," said Rath. "They were going to be given away to fans on the Emancipation Tour." Rath said his estimate on the project was accepted. The price was $ 2,000 apiece for the first two guitars, and $ 1,500 for the remaining 10. The work was intricate. The guitars were to be copied from an original that Prince provided - for all of one day - and built from whole blocks of wood, not bolted together. Rath said he got the $ 4,000 for the first two upfront, then ordered materials and built special tools. Very soon, Rath learned he wasn't moving fast enough for Paisley. "The first day I received a check, I got a call from [a PP employee]. Can you have one of these guitars ready by Friday? Rath said he was asked. "I said, 'Absolutely not. It takes weeks to build a hand-carved instrument and install the electronics. It's going to take us at least a month to build these first two guitars.' " Rath also delivered, along with the first two guitars, 12 certificates of authenticity that Paisley had requested. A couple of months passed before he called his Paisley contact; Rath was told everything was fine. "Six months later, I received a catalog in the mail" from an L.A. guitar company. And pictured in it was a cloud guitar made by someone else. "I was, 'Oh, great, well, they kind of screwed us for 10 instruments,' " recalled Rath, who was prepared to live with that. "Then I received a phone call from a friend who works in Nashville. She just had a customer put on consignment a guitar he [got from] Prince." Rath thought that was fabulous until he learned "it was the [California-made] guitar with my certificate of authenticity." Rath believes he makes a better guitar, and now he's worried that someone with one of his certificates is going to come after him with complaints about somebody else's instrument. Rath thought about suing but was disheartened when the only lawyer he contacted offered to write Prince a letter for $ 600. Neither Prince nor his people returned our call.