Parker THE White Fly Pre-Production (Pre-1993)

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

This is a pre-production Parker Fly, built before Parker Guitars had fully developed their production processes. With no serial number stamped anywhere on the instrument, it dates to 1993 or earlier, which places it in the very earliest period of Ken Parker's Fly design.

This Fly comes directly from Ken Parker's personal collection. Ken called it "THE White Fly." He held onto it as a tangible record of the Fly's development, a working document of where the design started before anything got locked down for the production line.

Ken rewrote the rules of electric guitar design with the Fly. The tonewood core wrapped in carbon and glass fiber, the proprietary stainless frets, the dual magnetic and piezo electronics, all of it added up to something that didn't sound or feel like anything else on the planet. Pre-production examples like this one are particularly fascinating because they capture that design in an early, exploratory state, before anything was finalized for the production line.

What sets this particular Fly apart is the wood. Body and neck are both poplar, and of all the Flys I've had through the shop and across my bench over the years, this one stands out as one of the most acoustical Flys I've played. Unplugged, there's a real resonance to it, more like what you'd expect from a chambered or semi-hollow instrument than a Fly. The poplar is doing real work.

Plugged in, the Fly Deluxe electronics give you the full package: magnetic pickups for the electric voice, and the piezo system for a credible acoustic sound. The Sperzel locking tuners keep tuning solid, and the hard-tail bridge keeps the response direct and immediate. At 4.8 lbs, it disappears against your body the way only a Fly can.

A very special Fly.

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.