the Fly Clone Project

jb63 wrote: ↑Fri Dec 04, 2020 12:53 pmi hate you.

The official sentiment of having missed out on some kind of “Parker listing“

Don't blame me, I didn't buy this one

https://reverb.com/item/37500587-parker ... rald-green

Let's hope this is a trend of under 2k Parkers!

InsideInfo wrote: ↑Fri Dec 04, 2020 4:39 pm Let's hope this is a trend of under 2k Parkers!

It seems like, despite small waves here and there, good Flys can be easily had for under 2k if you're okay being a little patient for one to pop up in that price range. Here's one that went up yesterday in excellent condition and sold for $1600:

https://reverb.com/item/37483072-parker ... usty-black


FWIW--I've been hearing people talk about "the prices of Flys are starting to skyrocket" for about 9 years, and it doesn't seem to be true...certainly not "skyrocket" true!

vjmanzo wrote: ↑Fri Dec 04, 2020 6:29 pm I've been hearing people talk about "the prices of Flys are starting to skyrocket" for about 9 years

Just my two cent-observations: That community sentiment and the resale market trends have been following Steinberger’s: There was a period of about a year following both brands’ end of production where sellers had a hard time giving the guitars away (I scored three ZT3s for $700 each after Ned ended his relationship with Gibson in ‘13, then two Flys for around the same price at the end of ‘15 following the July end of production). The lowest I recall seeing a fully-functional, pre-refined Fly go for during that period was $165 from a Guitar Center.

From there, scarcity-fetishization and word of mouth create the bubbles we’ve seen in which no one seller knows what the guitar can actually be said to be worth anymore; and so errs on the side of greed: $3k listings with the intent to negotiate as low as $2k are witnessed by people who list theirs at a firm $2.9k under the presumption that it’s priced to move. The asking prices trickle upward, but we’ve seen some of the same Flys (whether $3k+ case queens or $2k fixer-uppers) listed for far above their worth for 6-12 months, now. The sellers are just waiting for either the market to rise to their arbitrary number or for someone to make an offer 15% under their 100% markup.

Not to light a fire under VJ, but a manufacturer reintroducing Parker or Parker-like guitars to the market the way Gibson did with their bottom-shelf Spirit line of Steinbergers is what it takes to nudge the resale market a bit closer to realistic prices. I’ve been waiting on JAM to notice the Reverb trends the way Gibson did after everyone and their grandma had been selling headless guitars like hot cakes for two years - But I can also see their reticence to produce anything to do with a brand they tried and failed to make money with in the first place, when they could focus their attention anywhere else and have better chances of making a splash.

I think you may be on to something, @mmmguitar; I can certainly see signs of that happening, unfortunately.

Regarding USM or another company reviving Parker Guitars: I would absolutely welcome a brand to do just that!! From what has been shared with me, many companies have sought to buy and revive Parker Guitars through the years, but, and here’s the bottom line: none of the original tooling survived, there’s little if any institutional knowledge at USM about how these instruments and the many unique parts are made, and, perhaps the most important thing to prospective company: Flys have never been very profitable. @Ken Parker is one of the smartest people I know, and if Ken and his team couldn’t find a way to make the Fly profitable, I’m confident that it can’t be done.

With Fly Clone, we’ve got an active research lab, EGIL, full of really talented men and women who absolutely love a good challenge and love guitar innovation! So, in addition to the other non-Fly guitar research projects we work on, we always keep a few Fly projects cooking; since the fall, we’ve been heavy into springs research, remaking the Flex PCB cables, and refining the fret-to-fretboard jigs. Having remakes of the tooling and harder-to-find parts will obviously benefit the few hundred thousands of us Fly owners out there, but the process of doing Fly Clone also, in a way, memorializes this very special thing that happened with guitars a few decades ago that lots of people made possible through incredible effort, but nobody else in the profession has really tried to replicate. For my lab, I don’t see much ROI on Fly Clone, but I’m an academic: what do I care about money?! I’m more interested in the R&D, which, really is just replicating and exploring much of Ken’s research agenda from when he was in his late 30s/early 40s. He had a team around him that helped him execute his vision, many of whom are part of this forum, and, with USM included: we all reaped the benefits of that effort! I mean, we also paid a lot for it compared to other guitars , but, for everything that goes into these instruments: we didn’t pay what it probably should have cost us!

All of that to say: if another company or group built a new Fly that was, in fact, like the old Flys we all love, I’d be thrilled! I’d still keep Fly Clone going because, as I mentioned, I think the Fly was a good direction for guitars, one other companies should probably have imitated. If, in the 1990s/2000s, a dozen or so companies were better-suited to knock off Flys with copies, the electric guitar-making profession could have evolved differently. We all know that the Fly embodied some concepts that other manufacturers haven’t explored.

Interesting analogy with the Spirit guitars; I do wonder about that. Even if USM or another company someday “reboots” the Fly with something close to the Flys we know and love, then they still have the lingering issue of “how can we make a profit with this?!” The way the Fly, NiteFly, and Fly Bass are designed, they’re expensive and time consuming to get right, and very easy to get wrong, so, to make a lot of money, you’d have to either price the instruments high or make them differently, which, I suppose, to some, is what USM was trying to doing with their refined Flys and NiteFlys! We know, however, from Ken and others that it’s not the materials that make the Fly expensive, it’s all the effort!

If you want it done like Ken did it, it’s really quite challenging. I, of course, want to see Flys made again as close as possible to the way Ken did it, so that’s what our sights are set on, starting with the re-creation of the tooling and some of these mission critical components. Fortunately, we don’t have to earn a profit with our lab, and my students learn all sorts of cool stuff in the process!

I should mention: given the challenges I’ve noted, I’ve been reluctant to say outright that I really want to get to the point where someone can say, “V.J., I want a Fly made of all basswood with just a bridge pickup route, completely unfinished, with small frets, and I’ll drill my own holes for the switches and pots when I decide where I want them”, and then, in the lab, we follow our specs, use our tools, and make that instrument; that’s the dream! It might still be expensive to get that Fly, but at least it won’t be impossible like it is now!! Today, even if someone has $5k in hand for a Fly Nylon, they have to hope that one appears on Reverb or eBay and, man: that’s just really bleak! The Fly is so cool and all of these incredible human beings at Parker Guitars (USM included) put a lot of effort into their work to make the Fly a success, and it deserved a better fate than what it got.

Fortunately, there are a lot of alternatives to the Nitemix!