Radical Parker guitar challenges industry standards.

Take five pounds off a conventional electric guitar, shave its contoured body down to a thickness of one-half inch, and what do you have left? The new Parker guitar from Korg USA. After visiting the Korg display at NAMM, dealers will undoubtedly spend time searching their vocabularies for words to best describe this radical new solid-body electric guitar. Outside its six strings and tuning gears there is little that is conventional about this new instrument. The striking, streamlined design of the guitar has been made possible by a patented manufacturing process for bonding wood and composite materials that guarantees exceptional resonance, rigidity, and durability.

Parker Guitar Company, a new partnership between Korg USA, Ken Parker, designer of the new instrument, and Larry Fishman, owner of Fishman Transducers, has been formed to manufacture and market the new guitars. The new guitars will be manufactured in a company-owned facility in Massachusetts.

The Parker guitar has been in various stages of development since the early '80s when Ken Parker began looking for ways to improve the current state of the art in guitar design, which has remained virtually unchanged since the early '50s. "I wanted to improve the stiffness of the guitar without adding weight. My original idea actually came from a 300-year-old Renaissance lute that was fabricated from softwoods and veneered with a sturdy ebony," he states.

LIGHT WEIGHT/HEAVY SUSTAIN

Parker was so impressed with the combination of softwoods and ebony that he made a guitar using a veneering technique. "When I finished the instrument, the results were admirable," he recalls. "The guitar was light, its resonance was excellent, and it was very strong. The only problem was that translating this process into a manufacturing environment would have been next to impossible."

Trained as a machinist and woodworker, Parker got his cue for the new guitars after spending years tinkering with airplanes, motorcycles, and automobiles. "Spending time with boats and planes quickly showed me that high-tech materials had yet to be innovatively applied to the manufacture of guitars. Composite materials have long been used in guitars; however, their application has been in very ordinary ways. A graphite neck hooked to a wooden body or vice-versa does little to advance guitar design. It's just a different twist on a 40-year-old concept," explains Parker.

In the early stages of development, Parker teamed-up with Larry Fishman, a noted transducer designer and manufacturer. "I needed someone with Larry's expertise to develop new pickups for my instruments. The results of his work was ideally suited for the Parker Guitars because it combines both magnetic and piezo pickup technology which creates new sound possibilities." Parker has also developed a new process for securing frets without a tang. As a result, the frets can be made from much harder material than conventional frets, thus greatly extending their life. "I spent ten years on 48th street learning how to adjust frets for a cadre of professional players. It's a tedious task but can make the difference between a quality instrument and a piece of junk. Our fretting system is patent-pending worldwide. Fret leveling and refretting will be a task of the past with our new guitar," explains Parker. The new technique will also allow Parker guitars to have one-of-a-kind graphics bonded on fretboards.

The Parker line features two guitars, The Fly and The Super Fly, and a bass dubbed The Fly Bass. The instruments all have two-octave fretboards and a heel-less transition that assures easy hand access to the upper frets. Looking head-on, the guitars have a singular form that has been designed to ensure excellent balance. Turning the guitar on its side is guaranteed to draw gasps due to the incredible lack of mass. Parker instruments will retail for between $1,200 and $1,600 and will be available in five models: The Fly Bass in four-and five-string versions; The Fly Guitar; a Fly Deluxe; and The Super Fly Guitar. The Super Fly weighs in at just two-and-one-half pounds, anywhere from five to eleven pounds lighter than traditional electric guitars. The guitar will be available in several colors and outfitted with numerous pickup configurations and with or without a Parker-designed tremolo  system. The Fly Guitar and Fly Bass are slightly heavier than the Super Fly, weighing in at just over five pounds each. Dealer shipments are expected to commence in May 1992.

"We're taking a first adventurous step into the future of guitars with this partnership. Not only does this new relationship permit Larry Fishman, Ken Parker, and Korg to enter a developing market with a new contribution totally unlike the average instrument, but it also allows us to contribute to the way music, and especially guitars, will be heard and perceived in the future. We believe we have created the standards against which future guitar developments will be measured," stated Mitchell Colby, senior vice-president at Korg USA.