Parker Pre-Production Orange Fly

THE KEN PARKER COLLECTION

Presented by Craig Snyder, CR Guitars

I first met Ken Parker in the late 1970s, on 48th Street in New York City, back when that stretch of Midtown was still the beating heart of the guitar world. I picked up one of his archtops in the shop there and immediately knew I was holding something different. Not different in the way that gets said about every guitar that comes along, but genuinely, architecturally different — as if the person who built it had asked questions nobody else had thought to ask.

Ken had that quality in everything he did. He was fearless in the best possible way: self-assured enough to throw out convention and curious enough to never stop asking what a guitar could be. At every guitar show I attended, he drew a crowd. Players, builders, collectors — everyone wanted to be in that conversation with him. He was as warm and disarming as he was brilliant, and that combination is rare.

Over the decades that followed, our friendship deepened. I watched him push the Parker Fly into production, watched him rethink the electric guitar from the ground up, and later watched him turn his attention to archtops with the same restless intelligence. He never stopped. That was Ken.

I am honored — and honestly a little humbled — to have been entrusted with finding homes for a collection of guitars from Ken's personal workshop. These are not production instruments. They are the experiments, the collaborations, the explorations that mattered most to him. Each one is a window into how his mind worked.

Sam Krimmel worked alongside Ken for years and knows these instruments better than anyone. He has prepared detailed notes on each guitar, and his words are part of every listing here. I'll add my own thoughts where I can, but Sam is the authority on what Ken built and why.

These guitars deserve players and collectors who understand what they're holding. I hope that's you.

— Craig Snyder, CR Guitars

Sam Krimmel worked closely with Ken Parker and now carries the torch for Ken's legacy. Nobody knows these instruments better, and I'm grateful to have him as a partner in bringing significant pieces like this one to the right hands.

I have known Ken for over 40 years. He was one of the most original minds the guitar world has ever produced — not just a great builder, but a genuine inventor who questioned everything about how a guitar could be made. The Parker Fly wasn't a refinement of what already existed. It was a complete rethinking, and this guitar is where that rethinking began.

What makes it extraordinary isn't just the specs or the provenance. It's that you're holding the moment before anything was decided. Fender was in that Connecticut shop watching Ken build this guitar. The deal that would have changed the entire trajectory of the Fly hadn't happened yet — and ultimately didn't. Ken kept this guitar for decades after that. That's not something builders do casually.

For a collector, this is as close to a primary source as it gets.

IN SAM'S WORDS
"This Parker Fly is completely unique and closer to Ken's initial vision for what he wanted the Fly to be. In 1988, when Fender became interested in working with Ken Parker and Larry Fishman, they visited Ken at his shop in Connecticut and watched him build this very guitar. One of Ken's primary goals with the Fly project was to make the guitar as light as possible, and this one reflects that directly. The back is carefully sculpted, leaving only the material needed for the electronics.

"After the Fender meeting, Ken and Larry had the guitar painted bright orange by Don Hutchinson and commissioned artist Kevin Cassidy to decorate the fingerboard. The bridge is a custom-anodized piece made by Ken's friend, Marvin Jensen. Ken kept this guitar in his personal collection because of its place in the Fly's origin story. The Fender interest never became a deal, and the project was eventually picked up by Korg, but this orange Fly remains a tangible piece of that history."

If you'd like to find out more about this item, just call or e-mail me. It would be my pleasure to talk to you about it.