Ken Parker is an American luthier known for his unique archtop guitars and the

Parker Fly The Parker Fly was a model of electric guitar built by Parker Guitars. It was designed by Ken Parker and Larry Fishman, and first produced in 1993. The Fly is unique among electric guitars in the way it uses composite materials. It is notable f ...

electric guitar which came out in 1993. He is the founder of

Parker Guitars Parker Guitars was an American manufacturer of electric and acoustic guitars and basses, founded by luthier Ken Parker in 1993. Parker guitars were distinguished for their characteristic light weight and the use of composite materials.

Life and career

Parker was raised on Long Island, New York and made his first guitar (out of wood and cardboard) at the age of 13. In his early 20s, after studying various aspects of tool-making and woodworking, he worked in a

grandfather clock A grandfather clock (also a longcase clock, tall-case clock, grandfather's clock, or floor clock) is a tall, freestanding, weight-driven pendulum clock with the pendulum held inside the tower or waist of the case. Clocks of this style are common ...

factory in a

Rochester, New York Rochester () is a city in the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, and Yonkers, with a population of 211,328 at the 2020 United States census. Located in W ...

and began building stringed instruments while working with the furniture-maker Richard Newman. Guitar lessons further sparked his interest in the instrument and in the 1970s he returned to the New York City area where he began working with a lute maker on Long Island. He then worked at Stuyvesant Music in Manhattan repairing string instruments. From 1983 had his own shop where he worked on the development and construction of violins, cellos, and especially Renaissance lutes.Baker, Rorick (January 2009)
"Luthier's Workbench: Ken Parker Guitars"
''Acoustic Guitar'', Issue 93 (reprinted on kenparkerarchtops.com). Retrieved 1 May 2015. In the early 1990s, he founded the company

and collaborated with Larry Fishman to design the Fly, a controversial, innovative and futuristic

electric guitar An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar (however combinations of the two - a semi-acoustic guitar and an electric acoustic gu ...

brought out in 1993. The Fly incorporated non-traditional materials like

fiberglass Fiberglass (American English) or fibreglass ( Commonwealth English) is a common type of fiber-reinforced plastic using glass fiber. The fibers may be randomly arranged, flattened into a sheet called a chopped strand mat, or woven into glass clo ...

and

Carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer Carbon fiber-reinforced polymers (American English), carbon-fibre-reinforced polymers (Commonwealth English), carbon-fiber-reinforced plastics, carbon-fiber reinforced-thermoplastic (CFRP, CRP, CFRTP), also known as carbon fiber, carbon compo ...

blended with more traditional elements like mahogany, basswood and spruce. His tremolo/vibrato design allowed the user to choose between floating or dive only operation, and it could also be used as a stop tail bridge. The Fly weighed around 5 pounds, while most full size solid body electric guitars of the same category usually weigh from 7 to more than 9 pounds. Parker was one of the first builders to use stainless steel

frets A fret is any of the thin strips of material, usually metal wire, inserted laterally at specific positions along the neck or fretboard of a stringed instrument. Frets usually extend across the full width of the neck. On some historical instrum ...

that were glued on the

fretboard The fingerboard (also known as a fretboard on fretted instruments) is an important component of most stringed instruments. It is a thin, long strip of material, usually wood, that is laminated to the front of the neck of an instrument. The st ...

. With Larry Fishman's help he was also one of the first builders to embrace the use of a piezo bridge which allowed the electric guitar to simulate the sounds of an acoustic one and blend the acoustic with the electric signal through his innovative control layout. The Fly had 11 patents and was exhibited at the

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

. Parker sold his company in 2004. A few years later, he started designing

archtop guitar An archtop guitar is a hollow electric or semi-acoustic guitar with a full body and a distinctive arched top, whose sound is particularly popular with jazz, blues, and rockabilly players. Typically, an archtop guitar has: * Six strings * An ...

s. His archtop designs incorporate an adjustable neck that mounts to the guitar via a turnbuckle mechanism that allows the action to be adjusted without affecting the tuning, a unique

tailpiece A tailpiece is a component on many stringed musical instruments that anchors one end of the strings, usually opposite the end with the tuning mechanism (the scroll, headstock, peghead, etc.). Function and construction The tailpiece anchors t ...

and non-traditional

sound hole A sound hole is an opening in the body of a stringed musical instrument, usually the upper sound board. Sound holes have different shapes: * round in flat-top guitars and traditional bowl-back mandolins; * F-holes in instruments from the vio ...

s. As of 2015 Parker has a shop in Massachusetts where he builds a small number of hand made and individualized custom archtop guitars per year.Bilger, Burkhard (14 May 2007)
"Struts And Frets, Building A Better Guitar"
''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

''. Retrieved 1 May 2015.

References

External links

*
Ken Parker
NAMM Oral History Program Interview (2010) {{DEFAULTSORT:Parker, Ken Guitar makers American luthiers Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Businesspeople from New York City