THE KEN PARKER COLLECTION

Presented by Craig Snyder, CR Guitars

I first met Ken Parker in the late 1970s, on 48th Street in New York City, back when that stretch of Midtown was still the beating heart of the guitar world. I picked up one of his archtops in the shop there and immediately knew I was holding something different. Not different in the way that gets said about every guitar that comes along, but genuinely, architecturally different — as if the person who built it had asked questions nobody else had thought to ask.

Ken had that quality in everything he did. He was fearless in the best possible way: self-assured enough to throw out convention and curious enough to never stop asking what a guitar could be. At every guitar show I attended, he drew a crowd. Players, builders, collectors — everyone wanted to be in that conversation with him. He was as warm and disarming as he was brilliant, and that combination is rare.

Over the decades that followed, our friendship deepened. I watched him push the Parker Fly into production, watched him rethink the electric guitar from the ground up, and later watched him turn his attention to archtops with the same restless intelligence. He never stopped. That was Ken.

I am honored — and honestly a little humbled — to have been entrusted with finding homes for a collection of guitars from Ken's personal workshop. These are not production instruments. They are the experiments, the collaborations, the explorations that mattered most to him. Each one is a window into how his mind worked.

Sam Krimmel worked alongside Ken for years and knows these instruments better than anyone. He has prepared detailed notes on each guitar, and his words are part of every listing here. I'll add my own thoughts where I can, but Sam is the authority on what Ken built and why.

These guitars deserve players and collectors who understand what they're holding. I hope that's you.

— Craig Snyder, CR Guitars

CRAIG'S POV
I'm fortunate to be able to offer this rare 5-string bass. The Fly Bass had one of the shortest production windows of any Parker model, and this particular example never entered the retail channel at all. It was built by Ken's own team as a parting gift, finished in a sunburst you won't find on any production Fly Bass. That kind of provenance doesn't need embellishment. I'll let Sam take it from here.

In Sam's Words
"This Fly Bass was made in March of 2003 — serial number 0303249 — which would place it just a few months before Parker Guitars moved production from their Wilmington factory to U.S. Music Corp's facility in Vernon Hills, Illinois, in July of that year.

"The Fly Bass, both the four-string and the five-string versions, was the last major instrument design project developed under Ken's direct guidance at Parker Guitars, following the full lineage of Fly and NiteFly models. Its construction is genuinely unlike anything else. The tapered body was built by precisely laminating multiple thin, tapered layers of wood, leaving only a molded cavity for the neck — an approach that required extraordinary precision at every step. The neck itself followed the same multi-laminate principle, with a thin layer of carbon fiber bonded across the back for reinforcement and stability. The fingerboard carried forward the same technology Parker had pioneered on the Fly guitar: wear-resistant stainless steel frets bonded directly to a carbon/glass composite sheet.

"Because the Fly Bass only began shipping in October of 2002, and Parker Guitars was sold to U.S. Music Corp the following year, very few Fly Bass instruments were ever completed under Ken's watch. This particular example was made by the employees of Parker Guitars as a gift for Ken — finished in a rare sunburst — and remained in his possession from that day forward."

YEAR 2003 (March)
SERIAL # 0303249
MODEL Fly Bass FB-5 (5-string)
CONDITION excellent — various buckle rash and some minor dings and scratches throughout
BODY multi-laminate tapered wood construction with molded neck cavity
NECK multi-laminate with carbon fiber reinforcement along the back
FINGERBOARD carbon/glass composite
FRETS stainless steel (bonded to composite fingerboard)
HARDWARE black
FINISH Sunburst
WEIGHT 7.6 lbs
CASE Parker gig bag