Parker Guitars

Est. 1993 Website ↗

About

Parker Guitars built some of the most radical electric guitars ever mass-produced. Designed by luthier Ken Parker and best known for the Fly series, its instruments wrapped a carbon fiber and glass composite exoskeleton around a wood core, cutting weight dramatically while combining traditional magnetic pickups with piezo pickups for hybrid electric/acoustic tone.

History

Ken Parker spent years developing a radically different approach to electric guitar construction: a thin composite shell of carbon fiber, glass fiber, and epoxy — reportedly thinner than a normal paint finish — wrapped around a wood core to add rigidity while removing weight. Working with Larry Fishman of Fishman Transducers on a piezo pickup system, Parker combined that composite shell with a stereo output blending traditional magnetic pickups and piezo transducers, letting players mix electric and acoustic-like tones from a single instrument. The resulting Parker Fly debuted in 1993 to immediate attention for weighing barely 4.5 pounds despite its sustain and stability. U.S. Music Corporation acquired the company in 2003 and continued production through several model variants, but Parker Fly production ultimately ceased in 2016.