Black '96 Deluxe "Guinea Pig"
Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2023 3:49 am
As has become typical of me, I forgot to photograph the thing during the daytime: So enjoy a harsh LED lamp illuminating one corner of my music room.
Circa July 2015, the word that Parker Guitars was officially kaput didn't come as a surprise to me: I had kept an eye on the floundering brand in its final years, and there had been a growing consensus that quality seemed to be dropping as prices managed to keep increasing. Having previously sold my 2008 Mojo in 2012 with the sentiment of leaving the Parker Fly behind altogether, I felt I had no stake in the brand beyond perhaps acquiring an Adrian Belew model the next time I had ten thousand dollars burning a hole in my pocket. In any case, I had a cross-country move and other grownup matters demanding my attention.
Come January of 2016, I was settled in to a cheap apartment in a new state, with the income from my new job affording me the budget to resume acquiring guitars. I found that, in the meantime, the bottom had fallen out of the Parker resale market; with dozens of panicked owners competing to offload guitars they were paranoid would be worthless once a proprietary component failed. Two such people had beater Deluxes for sale: One was a black '96 purported to be in decent shape, which the seller wanted $1,000 for. The other guitar will get its own thread after I paint it.
At the time, nostalgia had led me to become reacquainted with Ibanez guitars. However, my impressions of the guitars I tried served only to reinforce the sad reality that I had been utterly spoiled by my experiences with brands such as Parker, Vigier, Steinberger, etc. So even though the RG565 reissue I had most recently acquired did the job, I knew a used Fly would blow it out of the water.
I think of the character of the guitar as being what people would generally associate with a Gibson SG: snarling and aggressive, with pronounced mids and highs. Though not lacking for bass, my heavier '97 Deluxe is much warmer and rounded in the top end (which is actually more in line with my preferences).
I came to refer to the guitar as "Guinea Pig" because I found myself using it as a testing ground for every electronic mod I thought might improve other guitars needing to bridge the gap in quality: Different pot and cap values, push-pull vs push-push, '50s tone pot wiring vs '60s and modern, pickup baseplate swaps, tuned coil splits and treble bleeds, new string alloy formulations, etc. I even used the guitar to audition pickups I purchased with the intent to install in other Flys. I don't like to think about preserving the resale value of my guitars; which is what makes a beater Fly such fun.
The previous owner had moved the strap button to the crook of the horn as an experiment (something I immediately changed back). They had also replaced the hex bushing with a round one, rather than track down a hex bar. Some day, I'll get around to reinstalling the original bushing.
This thread details my more recent endeavor to pair an appropriate pot value with pickups which might otherwise sound too dull or too shrill in a Fly. The current component scheme I've arrived at is as follows:
The Dimarzio Air Classic bridge pickup I used previously was far too bright in the Fly without a 250kΩ pot to tame it. So I decided to try a higher-wind pickup with a lower resonant peak, ran into a 1MΩ volume pot and 500kΩ tone pot. The 12kΩ Pete Biltoft Vintage Vibe Fly bridge humbucker with asymmetrical coils (previously bought off Patzag) was too hot for my tastes; so I modified it to have a lower inductance (closer to PAF levels). I enjoy the 1MΩ volume pot at 10 - but the taper and high end-rolloff when turning down left much to be desired; so I dialed both in with a trimpot-adjustable high-pass filter that cleans an overdriven amp right up by time the volume knob hits 7. I used a 330kΩ resistor to have the Bluesbucker see the volume pot load as 250kΩ. I'm liable to change that between now and when I get around to putting a Sustainiac driver in. [Update: Never did do that; because I sold the thing in 2023].
The six position FreeWay pickup selector switch covers the Les Paul and Tele tones and, until I rout for a middle pickup, the 13 pin-out allows me to queue up those position 2 and 4 strat tones whenever I need my GR-55 to produce them.
The reason all three pots in the guitar are push-pull is due to my desire to install a Sustainiac at a later date (effectively test-fitting the components to get an idea of how much I'll need to enlarge the cavity route to accomodate the Sustainiac board). For the moment, none of the push-pulls are connected to anything. More excitement to come!
