the Fly Clone Project

I know, I know - this is the wrong forum for complaining about Fly guitars. I have a pre-refined Fly, and just for fun I'll tell you the things that annoy me about it.

First, the step stop switch. When I play I can feel it through my shirt - feels like there's a burr there. Only a bit annoying, but it has twice caught on my shirt and switched to full float mode at a gig. This made tuning a little puzzling, and once I even swapped guitars cos I thought the Fly had had a stroke or something.I now have the switch covered with some gaffer tape and all is good.

Second, I have to be careful about tightening one of the backplate screws, because the head of it can make its way into the battery compartment, making the battery very difficult to remove. This only happened once - when I eventually got the battery out I noticed it had a big scratch down one side and derr figured out what the problem was.

Third the pickup switch is I'm sure very positive and well built, but I have to use a finger and thumb to swap to the middle position. It's like the design decision was "well, you only need to use one sound for each tune because you're really professional, so we'll make the switching to be serious and aircraft quality so you never ever can select the wrong pickup" Makes me feel like I need a checklist for each tune.

And finally the Dime for the battery compartment. What kind of cultural hegemony is this? I had to go to America and ask someone if they could spare one. I must have looked a bit sad, so the bloke gave me two.

Apart from the above ridiculous complaints, I love this thing. Every time I pick it up I think about how cool it is. Even though the top horn is a weird shape.

And hi to Big Swifty my Aussie compatriot.

Heresy and Misadventure would make for a fine Jane Austen title. Perhaps one about erotic pancakes.

Some of my own misgivings:

-The guitar can *not*, in fact, fly. I straddled one as Harry Potter would a broom, used my heel to move the kickstand mounted in the bridge out of the way and, frankly, ended up feeling quite foolish after having bragged of it in fanciful detail to all who were present. I ended up storing the thing in an umbrella stand - Now I know why they call it a “Parker.”

-Ken refused to sell me a Fly that hadn’t been through the pizza oven. I just wanted to see what the guitar looks like before it melts and hardens into the shape we all know. I’ll ask you all the same thing I asked him: “Why not a waffle iron?”

-One of my Flys is haunted. By a bee.

-The guitar is too easy to play - To the point that, sometimes, my fingers actually exceed lightspeed and travel backwards in time. To when, exactly, I won’t remember until the next time I play. That said, I still manage to play ahead of the beat.

-I’m still uncertain as to what all the knobs and switches do - Though I find I enjoy the sounds I get from inputting Street Fighter combos.

-Though the Fly’s a more versatile tool than it perhaps first appears to the uninitiated (Aside from being the most expensive shoe horn I own, I can play hockey with one end and pull a turkey out of the oven with the other), I still find it sounds best when I’m not playing it.

mmmguitar wrote: ↑Sun Jun 12, 2022 12:55 am Heresy and Misadventure would make for a fine Jane Austen title. Perhaps one about erotic pancakes.

As in "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good guitar, must be in want of another. And also several warm and moist and unctuous pancakes dripping with honey from a hive of Ligurian bees, served with one single slightly overripe fig."