It is indeed a great lost to (living) humanity to loose its great minds, but still his letter is an incredible example of conscious apprehension of live and its transience. And reading 'shame' several times in the comments here is at least very weird to me.
God bless this beautiful soul's transition into the great unknown.
They're arguably the biggest step forward in electric guitar since the 50s. Lots of new stuff there for the time, some of which became standard years after: stainless steel frets, piezo+magnetic pickups, carbon fiber reinforcement, adjustable vibrato, possibly the most seamless/flattest neck joint ever... not to mention the whole design is amazing.
This video from this guy dropped just two days ago, and explains a lot about the features and constructions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1S6Cni3nkws
It's a shame they stopped manufacturing after the company was sold. I had one and regret selling, as prices haven't really come down!
Rest in peace and thanks for everything, Mr Parker!
So we found a nice big permanent sharpie, and Les Paul signed my Parker Fly.
The neck 'join' in particular is wicked: https://kenparkerarchtops.com/guitars2
I always though the Fly looked awful but I played one once and it was amazing. If they could've just done that but made it look less like a piece of modern art from Patrick Bateman's apartment, I would've definitely been more interested
He also caught mostly the attention of forward-looking players of past decades, rather than new players.
I wonder if he had gone after nu-metal artists like PRS did the brand would have survived.
I loved Parkers, even though I was way more a grunge person than a 80s person, but I'm mainly a bass player, and bass building is generally a lot less conservative than guitar building, and building with more exotic materials wasn't out of style for bass in the 90s, so Parkers kind of felt like a 90s guitar that had been built by a bass company.
With guitars, apart from the metal guitars, there's only vintage-inspired stuff with either a tune-o-matic or a Wilkinson tremolos... I'm exaggerating but that's indeed what I see for sale on my local shops.
On the other hand we do have Teuffel guitars in Germany, so maybe I should just put up and buy one from Uli Teuffel while he's still young.
My theory has been that it was that bass guitar is a new instrument. Electric bass really isn't an electric double bass, but electric guitar is an electric version of a steel-string guitar. There was a lot of history and nostalgia in guitar playing, whereas bass was this new thing.
The other part of my theory is that bass amplification demanded it to some extent. Amplifying a bass was hard at the time. And it's come so incredibly far. Guitar players still basically use the same amps they did in 1965. But bass players moved quickly from tubes to transistors, and now to class-d amplifiers, and miniaturized speakers. My 500 watt amp weighs 1.1 kg and fits in the pocket of my gig back, and my 4x5" cab which handles 400 watts of power and goes down to 35 Hz is 30 x 30 x 30 cm and weighs 9.5 kg. Those together are smaller and weigh less than my 15 watt guitar tube amp.
I feel like guitar players are constantly trying to get into the technology but then fashion changes. Grunge for example made everyone sell their racks and shredder guitars.
Now that I think about it, I actually had a POD bean before I even had an amplifier, but then it became unfashionable to not have tube amps among my in-group back then. On the other hand I see lots of touring bands using Kempers, Quad Cortex, Tonex, etc. so maybe the tide has turned! For now!
Being an engineer instead of a business-minded operator prevented his work from becoming too well known but the instrument and what he accomplished was special.
I know own the shop, guitars, and everything after his passing - a couple years ago I made a reddit thread asking for help - it blew up and is an interesting read - https://www.reddit.com/r/guitars/comments/1f07f1s/my_dad_lef...
I like to take pictures of products and build websites, unfortunately we just ran out of time.
I've had one of his electrics briefly and it felt and played great. I didn't bond with the instrument due to specific personal preferences, but it was great to feel for myself this particular guitar was as good an instrument as Parker reputation makes you expect.
I never owned one of his original Fly series guitars but I played many back in the 90s and owned a DragonFly for a few years (not his design, but incorporated elements).
https://www.talkbass.com/threads/what-happened-to-parker-gui...
He had a great attitude, and I loved him “passing the torch,” in that manner.
Maybe the attention the post gets, will help his family to recoup some of their medical costs. Kinda sucks, that they need to do it, though.
I grew up teaching myself to play guitar using the Online Guitar Archive (olga.org I think it was, all user-submitted ASCII text files). I was one of the teenage brats in the guitar shop putting their grubby hands on everything when the Parker Fly was first released. It blew my little mind, I have a lot of memories playing grunge riffs in a corner of Reliable Music. RIP Mr. Parker, good show old chap.
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Go play lute with the angles, noble sir.
I was actually working there, not for Ken but for Larry Fishman. I should never have been: I was too young and inexperienced and had no idea the responsibility I was taking on, or how underpaid I was for that responsibility. For a brief time I was shipping, receiving, inventory and stockroom. It near killed me and when they let me go I could only agree, I had no more to give and was totally burned out. I can still see the general manager, though I don't remember his name now.
I was trying to make guitars myself at the time, along very different lines, and when I played Ken Parker's new creation, I had enough sense to not recoil and show how much I just didn't click with it, but I still made Larry Fishman real mad and Ken alarmed and unhappy. Turns out Ken knew better than I did that there were people who'd understand what he'd invented: among them, Adrian Belew.
I ended up doing Ken-like stuff in my own field: I hope he learned that secret, that if you're doing anything really original you can only measure it by how intensely it affects people, both positively and negatively. I'd love to hear one of his archtops, and I have no idea whether I'd love or hate it, but I feel certain I'd immediately react in some way, and that's the highest compliment.
Can be a revolutionary talent, participate in commerce, and not afford to bury yourself.
Parker guitars is new to me. Saw some pics. They look absolutely gorgeous!!
As a profession, luthiery is quite niche. I feel it’s one of those professions, like all craftsmanship, that is timeless.
Looking at these pics makes me feel like I want to learn the art.
(Bassist here)
Having started in the '1970s, it features topics of social justice and the fate of Native Americans to a literary level rarely found in comics, but it's particularly good in how it depicts realistic characters - often conflicted, incoherent, and of uncertain morality. Parker himself is hardly a saint, and definitely not a hero to start with.
As far as I know, it has only partially been translated to English from its native Italian, but even the smallest nuggets is worth experiencing IMHO. There is something about Italians doing Westerns (see also: Sergio Leone) that brings the genre to epic levels.
toomuchtodo•4mo ago