Earlier this year, after 30 years as a keyboard player, I decided to give in to my primal instincts and finally treat myself to a guitar. The last straw came when Sweetwater instituted its Custom Select Premium Direct Luthiers program, which offers our customers the finest guitars in the industry with all the benefits and conveniences of our “Sweetwater Difference”.
It became impossible to walk past our guitar showroom, packed with Paul Reed Smiths, Gibsons, G & Ls, Jacksons, Godins, Martins, Ovations, Epiphones, Steinbergers, Washburns, Takamines, Tobias and more, without feeling a twinge of envy. The room literally sparkles with flame-tops, flat-tops, amps and assorted hardware - it even smells alluring. Yes, I was hooked!
Now I had to choose which one I wanted. Well, actually, first I had to get an okay from my wife (thanks Joan, I love you). Clearly, I had to pick the exact right guitar for me as I wasn’t likely to get an okay for a second guitar.
So I read every ad, every guitar mag, and all of our flyers. I also talked to many of our Sweetwater employees over lunch about their guitars (this really is a great place to work) and, after much thought, decided what I wanted from a guitar: I needed a guitar that was truly professional-quality so that I wouldn’t need to trade up as I got better. This guitar needed to produce many different styles of sounds (I’m still a synthesist at heart) and it had to sound so beautiful that even my current playing abilities would be worth listening to. And finally, I wanted it to reproduce the shimmering timbres of an acoustic guitar and be able to blend them with the magnetic pickups.
This led me to the most recent addition to our guitar line: Parker Fly and NiteFly Guitars! These exquisite guitars are made of solid tonewoods chosen for their great response and sustain. The backs of the body and neck are strengthened and unified by a thin layer of carbon/glass/epoxy composite. It’s this patented process that enables a Fly to be so thin and lightweight, yet so amazingly strong and responsive. The fingerboard is composed of the same materials, making it ultra-fast, unusually stable and highly wear resistant. The spring-tempered, stainless-steel frets are perfectly bonded to the fretboard, providing superb intonation and effortless fingering. These frets are much longer wearing than nickel frets and the locking Sperzel precision-tuning machines provide accurate, stable tuning, a real plus for live gigs.
From the moment you first pick up a Parker Fly you’ll realize that this guitar has evolved to another level of being. Its feather-like weight and impossibly thin design hugs your body with almost no noticeable weight on the guitar strap. Now strum it. Without even plugging it in, you’ll feel undampened vibrations zinging all throughout the neck and body. Now plug it in and experience the two custom-designed DiMarzio humbucking pickups. Throw the chromium switch and you’ll hear a beautiful acoustic guitar texture courtesy of the Fishman active-piezo pickups. Put the switch in the middle and you can either blend the magnetic and the acoustic pickups to a mono guitar cable or use a stereo cable to run the electric and acoustic sounds to different amplifiers for an amazing dual-guitar wall of sound.
My favorite sound is a blend between the neck pickup and a hint of the piezo-acoustic sound. It makes chorus and flange effects sparkle with the added high-end. And until I started playing with it, I would have never imagined how much the piezos could add to distortion or overdrive. It takes the typical mid-range distorted sound and adds a full-bottom and crystalline-highs for a monstrous power tone.
These Parker guitars come in many different styles including: The Parker Fly Limited (list $3350), one sculpted out of gorgeous Butternut hardwood and hand-signed and numbered by Ken Parker (only 50 made!) and another made from Tulip Wood finished in Transparent Emerald Green (also hand-signed, with only 35 made!); the Parker Fly Classic (list $2850) with a solid Mahogany body; the Parker Fly Deluxe ($2575) with a solid Poplar body; and Parker's latest offering, the NiteFly, Parker’s first bolt-on neck guitars which features a solid, contoured maple body, and shares many of the Fly’s advancements. The NiteFly comes in two versions: The NiteFly V3 (list $1339) with three custom-designed DiMarzio single coil pickups, and the NiteFly V4 (pictured at right, list $1449) with two single coils and a fat-sounding DiMarzio humbucker in the bridge position.
For more information and more pictures of these beautiful, 21st Century guitars check out our Custom Select Web site at www.customselect.com. Or call your Sweetwater Sales Engineer today for complete information, as well as color and model availability and your special low Sweetwater price. Be honest: Isn’t it about time for all the other guitarists to be jealous?