O'Hagan Nightwatch Special Bass Blueburst USA 1980's

Cover of the 1965 Targ & Dinner catalog
(Source: www.gad.net)

He then worked at Meloway, notably distributor of a brand of Japanese acoustic guitars: Yamaki.

(Source: www.fretboardjournal.com)

These guitars were notably manufactured until 1981 by Roger Benedict before he opened his own guitar company.

But it was in Jeff Hill's store, Knut Koupée Music Store in Minneapolis, that one of the most wonderful stories concerning the O'Hagan brand took place.

Indeed, the story begins with a meeting between Jeff Hill, Prince, Dave Rusan luthier employed at Knut Koupée and an O'Hagan Shark guitar then Nightwatch.

These models are particularly interesting in the history of music of the 80's and even 90's since they are at the origin of the creation of Prince's Cloud Guitar, the first of which, original, was used in his film Purple Rain in 1984.

Here's what Dave Rusan says, in a Fret Board Journal article by John Woodland and Gerald Ronning from May 2020, on the occasion of the sale of Prince's original Cloud Guitar:

"The sides of the Shark were cut off of the maple neck-through body design and new sides were grafted on. The neck pickup humbucker cavity rout was filled with wood to be later routed from the back side of the guitar for the smaller, EMG neck pickup, while the existing bridge pickup rout already accommodated the EMG Prince used. The existing tuner holes were filled and a little wingtip part of the headstock was grafted on from a new piece of wood. Rusan notes that "only the first two were made from O'Hagan necks—after that, I did them all from scratch."

(Source: https://www.fretboardjournal.com/features/the-origin-of-princes-cloud-guitar/)

Dave Rusan in mid-1984, holding the second unfinished Cloud Guitar with the first Cloud Guitar behind him.