the Fly Clone Project

Scroll down for photos.

Hello, community. Marc, here. I just pounced on a listing that seemed fit for a project I had in mind: To feel better about not finding a Belew model, I figured I would just buy a USM-era “refined” Fly and add Graphtech Ghost saddles, Acoustaphonic/Hexpander boards, and (Possibly) a Sustainiac. The era of production is preferred because I wanted to avoid desecrating a prerefined Fly with a still-working ribbon assembly that doesn’t lend itself to modification beyond repairs. Though the 2011 truss rod redesign and cover aren’t my preference, they’re not dealbreakers.

For any made to feel squeamish by the proposed mods: I’ve installed all these in other Flys, and am an unapologetic tinkerer, in general. That said, anyone wishing to save the guitar from me by making an offer I can’t refuse is free to try . In updates to the thread, I’ll solicit wiring/control layout suggestions. Just off the top of my head, I’m thinking I’ll go with a dual-gang master volume for magnetic/synth, push-pull tone for either single coil-simulation or engaging the Sustainiac, and possibly adding a mini-toggle for engaging the Sustainiac octave-up mode if I can’t find a tone pot with the Belew functionality (push-pull with end detent for engaging it). The piezo switching and volume I’ll likely leave stock.

The omission of the mag/mix/synth toggle and program up/down buttons is deliberate: I have them on my other Flys, and feel the point of this project is to have a “clean” control layout emulating the Belew (which also lacks that switching). I may even go with a Freeway switch to engage the Sustainiac modes; just to leave room for more push-pull shenanigans.

Note to self: 3D-print blade switch bezels wide-enough to cover the hole for the Gibson-style 3 ways on Flys.

Now just watch a Belew come up for sale the day after I buy this one! I’ll bump with a proper review of the Supreme once it arrives, and be sure to include the messages exchanged about the condition and history of the guitar in the event that they end up proving especially pertinent. Until then, here are the listing photos:

I'm going to follow your progress as closely as I can!

I've got a plan to do what you're describing - at least after I've given myself some time with the pre-refined. Like you, I'm not going to monkey with my pre-refined.

I have the impression that the refined Fly models are "thicker" and will take the Sustainiac more easily. If anybody has comments about that, I'd love to read 'em. I'm probably only thinking this because the Adrian Belew Signature is a refined Fly, and it obviously holds the Sustainiac without cutting through the thin back.

If I can help in any way with the electronics, please let me know. Feel free to PM or write here.

Brian

Great tips and suggestions here, @mmmguitar! Thanks for summarizing these things; very helpful! Hopefully, this community can help direct people to the value of reading the manual, which really does a great job of explaining what’s going on with a Fly, and how to care for it.

I agree that you’re rolling the dice every time you buy a used Fly, even from people who claim to know Flys. Education is key for all of us in understanding these instruments, and a new Fly-owner might not have the sensibilities to Google the manual, so they treat the Fly like every other guitar they’ve ever owned...and then their frets fall off in six months because they used GHS Fast Fret on the fretboard!

I’m very intrigued by this project and I hope you’ll keep us updated!!!

As @rsdio mentioned, some Refined Flys do have a little more meat on them around the neck pickup, but it’s hard to predict which models, but, certainly, the Flys that had Seymour Duncan pickups (like the Mojo and much-later Flys) had a bit more. It’s not much more though, but, regardless, even on a pre-refined Fly, you do have enough material to mount the Sustainiac driver, but it depends on how you decide to mount it. Alan Hoover, the Sustainiac inventor, bolts through the neck joint; I’ve mentioned that I have a Sustainiac held in place by 3M heavy-duty double-sided tape. That’s a key component.

Very excited for this!

Thanks, guys. As I’ve mentioned in another thread, my past experience with Alan Hoover was enough to put me off Sustainiacs for almost ten years, now. If I end up putting one in the Supreme, I would be doing all the mods myself and likely use the double-sided 3M method VJ mentioned.

There’s actually a new sustainer pickup builder based in Indonesia I was considering working with; because he’ll fabricate them to fit in Flys, and they have a small circuit footprint. Unfortunately, his current design is driver-only; with no option to function as an active pickup the way Hoover’s design and the Fernandes, Jackson, etc. variations do. I can see the value for someone who never uses the neck pickup - But it would leave the Supreme feeling like a three-legged dog to me. Though it would be simple to mount a humcancelling single next to the driver coil, this wouldn’t be practical within the constraints of a Fly rout - So any Sustainiac project will likely be further down the line, once my 10+ other guitar projects are either seen to or further ignored.

Considering most of these mods are already in my black ‘96 deluxe, I may use it as a guinea pig/prototype for control placement and other brainstorms that I’ll post here for feedback.

I just happened to see a Fly Bluesbucker pickup on eBay after I purchased the Supreme; so that and (likely) a PAF Joe will be going into the guitar as the first mod, with a review of and comparison to the Gen2 pickups. If the PAF Joe doesn’t mesh for whatever reason, I have an Al Di Meola bridge pickup in a Strandberg that I’ve been curious to try in a Fly. Considering the Gen 1 neck pickup is a bit too tubular in the bridge position for my tastes, I fear the PAF Joe will be, as well. But there’s only one way to know!

Well, the first thread update is that I received a 21 lb small, square box that could not possibly contain the guitar. I contacted the seller and Reverb - Let’s see where things go from here.

@mmmguitar, are you saying you got ripped off?!

Thankfully, everything was resolved. The short version is that UPS put the guitar's label on the wrong box, then found the guitar later in the day and rushed it to me.

Here's the rambling review:

Cosmetically, the Fly is 10/10. It's some of the best figuring I've seen on a Trans Honey Supreme (which someone I showed the guitar to criticized as resembling "foamy piss").

Unfortunately, the generic, OEM import electronics of latter-year Flys live up to the anticipation their poor reputation informs:

1. Faulty mag/mix/piezo switch causes piezo signal to be heard when mag volume is at 0 unless piezo volume is also at 0.
2. Fault in magnetic selector switch causes humbuckers to intermittently cut out.
3. Magnetic volume and tone pots crackle, push-pull causes pickups to cut out intermittently.

Imagine the disappointment of latter-year Fly owners who were confronted with these cost-cutting measures on instruments costing between three and five thousand dollars! I'm currently of the mind that these component issues were present when the guitar left the factory; as I'm confident that I'm the first person to remove the cavity cover after the serial number was sharpie'd on the inside of it: The innards were in pristine condition (the pots hadn't even rotated loose from their factory orientation). It's a bit shameful to know that Parker case-queens such as this one are still liable to exhibit electronic problems if they're from a particular era.

Fortunately, I have plenty of spare pots, switches, and DeoxIt leftover from past projects - And I bought this for modding, anyway.

Please discount the honeymoon phase speaking when I say that this nonetheless may be the best Fly I've owned (Update: The blue '97 Classic was even better). The neck, as expected of a post-'08 Fly, is as chunky as I recall my '08 Mojo being. The all-maple body also contributes to being the heavier of the three Flys I currently own. I was surprised to find the fretboard has the 14" constant radius I should have known to expect. Though it isn’t my preference with Flys, it plays well-enough. What makes this Fly a standout is that, unlike various beater Flys I've owned, this one doesn't feel like it needs more than a string change and basic setup tweaks to get to where I want the playability to be.

In prior years, the radius and weight would have been potential dealbreakers for me. However - Sacrilege as it may be to say: The Fly is not my go-to guitar. Strandbergs have superseded Parkers as the featherweight guitars in my collection, and (so far) no guitar has been able to contend with the playability of my Vigier Shawn Lane. This has been a positive change: Rather than obsess over finding or making a Fly that's "perfect", my priorities have shifted to having Flys that are simply a joy to play. This is the main reason I'm considering a Sustainiac install after previously being soured on the brand.

Being as pickups are the first mod, I want to include my thoughts on the Gen 2s in the Supreme:

It's funny how familiar pickups can surprise you just by being mated with the right guitar on the right day. The stock neck pickup, which I've previously been unimpressed with (at the time, it seemed like Dimarzio took in the complaints to do with the Gen 1s and just further emphasized those qualities in v2), manages to sound like the ideal stock neck pickup: Its volume and voicing balances perfectly with the bridge when playing lead and, through a clean amp and the tone rolled off to 7 or 8, has the requisite jazz-y sound. In this instance, it mainly reminds me of modern Les Paul neck pickups.

The bridge humbucker is exactly as I remember: A mud bomb until you tweak your amp for it. As with the JB in a Mojo, I find the split tone more useful than the series one. I've always had this baseless impression that the Dimarzio employee who wound the Gen 2 bridge humbucker was chasing a way to make a Parker Fly sound like what people who've played Ibanez RGs with Tone Zones are used to hearing.

A final note is that splitting to the inside coils of each humbucker is a pet-peeve of mine. I understand that some prefer it- but the fact that I don't makes that switch position seem like something I'll never use. This is why the first mod will be replacing the pickups and putting in a passive RC bass-cut for the bridge humbucker. Exploratory surgery will include replacing the capacitor on the volume pot with a proper RC high pass filter and replacing any components that can't be cleaned.

I know this won't get interesting until I start putting more toys in under the hood. We'll see how long this renovation drags out for.

@mmmguitar, I think you’re currently in the lead for “funniest post” on this forum And I’ve now started a new punk band called “Foamy Piss”

Very exciting that you’ve acquired your favorite Fly!!! Interesting assessment of the pickups, and sorry to hear about the switches being as cheap as expected; I hate that. So, if I’m hearing you correctly, you feel like the Gen 2 bridge pickup is too muddy?

I think 2011 was about when they switched to the fixed 14” radius, and, wow: very interesting to hear that it has the chunky neck! I like thin-neck Flys, but I know some folks that would be all over that!

vjmanzo wrote: ↑Sat Jun 13, 2020 8:53 pm you feel like the Gen 2 bridge pickup is too muddy?

That's just me. I tend to prefer fairly low-output pickups (with high resonant peaks); and it's been my understanding that the Gen 2 pickups were formulated to compensate for complaints concerning the "thin" sound of Flys. Many have proven that Fly pickups of every generation can sound great - I'm just not one of them.

I play all kinds of neck shapes, but prefer the chunkier ones. Any time I shook Allan Holdsworth's hand, it was a bit of an identity crisis to know we had the same size hands - Yet he played like he had ten fretting fingers! We did at least share a common taste for meatier necks and cask-conditioned beers.

Gotcha—I also prefer low-output pickups.

Very interesting about Holdsworth—I saw him perform twice, and, man: what a monster player! In some regard, it’s a bit of a mystery what “feels” right to a given guitarist.

Case in point: Holdsworth tried a Ken-era Fly in (I believe) the 90s, and it scared him off stainless frets for 20 years. He claimed he could hear the strings "clicking" against the frets with every note. Then again, he was notoriously picky (He turned his nose up at the Vigier Shawn Lane once he was informed it had a 24.8" scale).

It wasn't until (Probably Jeff) Kiesel built him some headless prototypes to retain him as an endorser that he realized he "liked" stainless and EVO gold frets, and said as much in the video announcing the production models. No idea if it led him to reconsider the Fly. I doubt he ever would have gotten past the thin neck or it having a headstock.

mmmguitar wrote: ↑Sun Jun 14, 2020 9:53 am
But we did at least share a preference for meatier necks and cask-conditioned beers.

HA! Yes, Alan loved a giant thick neck! His carvin models, pre-headless, feel like they are all neck. He also loved giant frets, so I'd imagine a Nitefly might have been his choice over a fly. I miss Alan so much, but there always seems to be a new video or interview to read from when he was alive.

and yes - I own a Carvin Holdsworth "Fat Boy" - the neck is huge! so much so that the guitar is unbalanced and tilts to the floor neck side if you're not holding it ..

Typical, long-winded BUMP: After an extended honeymoon period (sadly spent away from the guitar), I’m soliciting wiring/switching suggestions for modding.

I’ve been fortunate to remain gainfully employed throughout 2020 - But it’s largely kept me from playing and modding my guitar collection; and I’ve been compensating by just buying more of them (new thread incoming). Earlier today, I set aside some time to spend with the Supreme, and tweaked an Axe FX Dumble ODS patch to try and really get a sense of the guitar’s character:

Compared to the funky, pseudo-scooped sounds of my pre-refined Deluxes, the Supreme seems to live in the high-mids: Cutting them sucks all the life out of the timbre; whereas boosting them suddenly imbues me with a sense of privilege akin to noodling on a Stradivarius - The guitar feels that lively, and sounds that elegant. Until I find a spruce Artist for the right price, the jury remains out as to which Fly model is my favorite.

When I first tinkered with the guitar in June (factory QC issues mentioned in previous post), some modding was necessary out the gate: The push/pull pot fell apart! So I took the opportunity to swap some pickups in and out, and put a push-push tone with series R/C filter in:

The Bluesbucker is my go-to Dimarzio neck pup; and it suits the Supreme just fine: As in most cases, it covers the bases I require by being jazzy in series, and SRV when split. Though a bit on the bright side in this guitar (as expected), it’s a lively and musical brightness.

After auditioning the Gen 2 neck pup in bridge position on a lark proved to be a mud bomb, I put in a PAF Joe I had on-hand. While still preferable to any of the stock bridge pups, I feel I could do with a little less output and/or some tweaks to the voicing to pair more effectively with this particular guitar. Dimarzio’s backlogged at least 6 months at the moment; so we’ll see what experiments I get up to in the meantime.

The series R/C filter was an experiment with Yamaha’s “Dry Switch” alternative to splitting. The next time I open the guitar up, I’m removing it - The component values really need to be tailored to each individual guitar in order to sound as good as a less-picky split-to-parallel R/C ground-shunt does. The current plan is to put Freeway 3x3 switches in each of my Flys, starting with the Supreme (as the stock switches are just awful). I don’t intend to go more imaginative than switching between humbucking and single combinations, but we’ll see.

With the Freeway handling splitting, I’ll rewire the push-push tone to reverse the phase of the bridge pup. That just leaves the piezo controls: At some point, I’m going to replace the elements and preamp with a Ghost Hex setup and have the only output be a 13 pin where the 1/4”-out currently is. I’ll save drilling for dual-outs until I have to rout to put a Sustainiac in (Update: I decided to keep both 1/4" and 13 pin jacks; rather than constrain myself to a 13 pin-only rig ala Belew). That leaves the piezo volume/3-way space up in the air, for now: The Acoustiphonic board is redundant in my 13 pin-setup; so I have no use for the controls or 9-volt until I put a Sustainiac in. I need to come up with some use for those holes, other than plugging them.

One last sentiment is that my preferences fall firmly in the pre-refined camp: The convenience of being able to adjust a Fly on the fly is certainly appreciated once you find yourself taking the guitar off and reaching for whichever cylindrical tool you jam into the step stop and spring tension wheel for the tenth time in five minutes after changing string gauges. That said, a good Fly from any era outclasses nearly any other guitar.

I figured I should bump this thread ahead of the one I'll be making for my latest acquisition.

For those unaware, every guitar I own is a perpetual work in progress; cycled between as I test stuff out. And by time I cycle back around to a given guitar, I often have new ideas for refinement which necessitate rewiring the whole thing.

At some point, I'd arrived at the following control scheme for the Supreme:


And, taking inspiration from the Belew model, I had an on/off switch for the Sustainiac preamp on the rear cover, next to the battery box:


After spending time away from the guitar while I experimented upon others, I returned to find that I wasn't really happy with having the battery box take up so much room in the cavity; and decided I'd prefer to further emulate the Belew layout by routing a battery box cavity out of the way of everything else. I then determined that I'd need to procure a smaller box:


The taller box is the original which Washburn used, and the shorter is a WD BBS1 shallow mount box.

The original box secures itself to the pickguard via a cage frame affixed with screws (pictured below). Removing this cage lowers the profile - But the WD box is still more compact.


However, the WD box had its own issue: There are these unnecessary plastic ridges all around the surface of the box's mounting flange/rim which prevents it from mounting flush. So I had to sand all that off with a dremel (pictured below):


After routing for the box and using the mounting flange to cover the horribly misshapen wound I'd dug into the guitar, I now have some much-appreciated extra working space within the control cavity (this thread details how I cut the new cavity cover):


But I wasn't done, yet! I had also decided that I prefer the magnetic pickup and synth output volume controls independent of one another (rather than on a dual gang pot); so that I can eliminate the mag/mix/MIDI toggle from the face of the guitar, while retaining the same functionality by using the pots to mute one signal path at a time.

Furthermore, I decided to move the Sustainiac preamp on/off switch to the face of the guitar ala Robert Fripp (he engages the preamp by pulling up on a dedicated push-pull pot - If it was set to power on by pushing down, then there's a chance the pot could accidentally engage the preamp and drain the battery by falling or being jostled in transport). But I didn't like the idea of a pot sticking out any time I either wasn't or was playing the guitar; and didn't want to add a dedicated toggle after eliminating the mag/mix/midi toggle. After mulling it over, I recognized that this was an opportunity to finally try the 4PDT S-1 switching potentiometers CTS makes for Fender: This would allow me to have three switches in each of the three pots, in a much cleaner arrangement. Though 4PDT switching is overkill for this application, I plan to modify a different guitar to have series/parallel switching for two humbuckers in an HSH layout done with a single pot; so all pickup selections and combinations can remain humcancelling.

I didn't bother photographing the next few details - but they were annoying enough that I wanted to rant in excruciating detail:

These S-1 pots are downright frustrating to adapt for any use other than pickguard-mounting, on a strat, with a strat knob. The following video a helpful gent made will shed a little light on the peculiarities of these switching potentiometers:




Firstly, the pots require proprietary knobs. Secondly, these knobs only come in two styles: Strat-style hat knobs designated for split shaft S-1 pots only and with "Volume" printed on them, or chrome barrel knobs for solid shaft S-1 pots only. Thirdly, the threaded bushings on these shafts are shorter than normal - So the "long shaft" S-1 pot is barely long enough to fit through the top of a Fly after having thinned the inside of the pot mount out with a forstner bit.

And, despite being CTS pots, you can't just transplant the appropriate length bushing from one CTS pot to the S-1; because the shaft length is different between models, as well, due to how the switching mechanism works: A knob topper, shaped like a push-pin, has a cylindrical rod (made out of either metal or plastic, depending on which knob type you're installing) which extends down through the potentiometer shaft to press a plastic switch button below the bottom of the pot casing, where the 4PDT switch assembly is. The best they could do was A FINGER ON A STICK! But because there's no retainer in the design to prevent this knob topper/Rube Goldberg button-presser from just falling out of the guitar knob, Fender essentially cuts lengths of plastic ink tube refills from ball point pens to press-fit onto the rod and fill the inner diameter of the pot shaft with hopefully enough friction that the knob topper doesn't still manage to fall out.

And it gets worse! These plastic tube fittings Fender sells comes in only the "short" length - Meaning that I had to cut the tube of an old pen I had laying around just to get the pots to work! For the record, I did experiments with heat shrink tubing, pickup mounting springs, and replacing the entire knob topper/actuator thing with pickup mounting screws cut to length and glued through a neck ferrule; and those all work, as well.

Another "really?" moment came courtesy of Fender either not producing or not currently producing a 250k version of the "long shaft" S-1 solid shaft pot - So I had to swap in the track from a different CTS 250k linear taper pot (the value Graphtech specs for their Hexpander/Acousti-Phonic volume pot).

Oh, and the fact that the barrel knobs only come in chrome meant that I had to spray them black with Duplicolor Shadow Chrome Blackout that's already flaking off in the manner I expected it to (I went for more of a marbled look, in anticipation of this - Not that it looks any better).

So here was the Supreme with the previous control layout:


And here's the current version:

The knob closest to the bridge pickup is mag volume for the Dimarzio and Sustainiac Driver, and switches the sustainer effect on. The next knob is mag tone and toggles between whether the sustainer produces fundamental note sustain or harmonic feedback when switched on. The last knob is the MIDI-assignable pot that people generally assign to synth volume. It's the power on/off for the Sustainiac preamp; so the battery won't drain while the guitar's sitting around with a cable plugged in. The toggle switches are a 6 position FreeWay which selects humbucker or single coil voicings for the pickups, and a MIDI-assignable S1/S2 momentary toggle which most assign for synth unit patch changes.

Suffice to say, I'm ready to move on to another project! The only things I see myself changing about the guitar would be in the event that I sell it to fund my next move. I wouldn't want the next owner to have to troubleshoot the S-1 pots; and so will likely change the mag volume and tone pots back to DPDT push-pulls, and replace the MIDI volume with the standard Graphtech linear taper 250k pot. What I've come to find, after all this time, is that just having the Sustainiac preamp power on when you plug in a 1/4" or 13 pin cable is sufficient for most needs - Fripp and Belew only have manual switches because they don't want the battery draining while the guitar is sitting plugged in onstage between soundcheck and showtime.

mmmguitar wrote: ↑Thu Aug 24, 2023 7:14 pm ... ahead of the one I'll be making for my latest acquisition.

Anticipation at it's highest peak!

Man that's gorgeous!

InsideInfo wrote: ↑Sat Aug 26, 2023 6:04 am Man that's gorgeous!

That's why I've refused to drill any new holes in the front of it. I feel guilty enough for having spent so much of the past three years staring at it more than I've played it.

Be happy to take it off your hands lol.

InsideInfo wrote: ↑Sun Dec 31, 2023 7:19 pm Be happy to take it off your hands lol.

I intend to list it for sale here in the classifieds for what I’ve put into it, at some point between now and April (I have revisions to the electronics I want to try out, first). But the disclaimer I’ve been telling anyone who asks is that @Patzag gets first refusal (No pressure, Pat - I’ll even helpfully talk you out of it, when the time comes).