the Fly Clone Project

hello,
just saw the video...
and surprise... a Parker Fly he play's live M.

Love it!! I really liked this era of Bowie’s music, and I totally remember seeing this! Thanks for posting this!

Yep, Reeves told me that Bowie borrowed it from him. It wasn't his guitar, only a loner.

Great info, @Browndog Owner; thanks.

I recall seeing Reeves playing a Fly (Deluxe?) without magnetic pickups, but I can’t remember when that was exactly; it was striking because it was a vibrato-equipped Fly but without mags (like the Fly Concert).

Of course, if you search Reeves+Fly you get some variation of this NiteFly image, which is impossible to not stare at

He played an artist during the 1995 tour, but he and Carlos mixed things up a bit.
I think it was 1996 where the guitar you mention turned up, but it wasn't used a lot.
By the end of 96 he'd use a the nitefly with the GK2 almost exclusively.
I can't remember which synth he had it plugged into. Its mentioned in some interviews at the time. GR20, maybe.
One of the ones that uses the strings so its more like a pedal than a synthesizer.

Ken Parker made up the guitar shown above and it indeed features a GK-2 pickup and a Fernandez sustainer kit installed. The piezo saddles in the bridge are disconnected. He used this guitar on both of Bowie’s Earthling and Hours albums. At that time he played through a Roland GR-20 guitar synth, and Roland VG-8 guitar processor. He told me that his custom made live stage 13 pin cable was the longest that Roland has ever made. He also used a Roland expression pedal to get lots of sound variations.

Great info, @Browndog Owner! Thanks!

I really like David Bowie’s music, and I was just listening to Earthling the other day!

Earthling is great but you have to hear the live treatments to really appreciate it.
There's an album called Live and Well.com you should check out. Really great guitar stuff.

True. Earthling is a brilliant album. Reeve’s regretted that there wasn’t another follow up album in the same genre. From there to Hours was a bit of a leap. More could have been exploited with their (Bowie / Reeves) sound at that time.