Hello! No Parker (Yet..)

[mmmguitar]

I am actually stunned I was able to find this. There was an Italian Plum Pre-Refined for sale at a local shop earlier this year. It was the first time I'd been able to actually sit and play one for a long time; it was selling for $2500 and had chips on the side thru to the paint.

Yeah - anything "Parker"-branded has fallen victim to the speculator market which ramped up in 2020, and it's resulted in outrageous asking prices for junker examples, as well as instances of blatant deception/fraud:

A Guitar Center fell prey to this scam of what appears to be a RF522 from 2015 being sold as a "prototype Fly", and is just keeping the lie going.

Lovie's Guitars was duped with the refinished PDF85 detailed here. The poster made three or four threads asking for confirmation that he had a unicorn guitar to sell, got the truth, and then made eBay, Reverb, and FB Marketplace listings insisting otherwise before defrauding a store which, like Guitar Center, has decided that their best course of action is to bank on someone more gullible than them being out there to pay more than they did - even after having been informed and linked to the thread explaining exactly what it is.

There are also plenty of listings for "Parker Fly Classic 2003" guitars on eBay which are nothing more than the same stock photos of an AliExpress kit; and I'm just waiting for the day we see a NGD thread for one of those here, where one of us will have to be the bearer of bad news. All I can hope for is that the majority of buyers will do their diligence when negotiating sale prices, possess the patience you demonstrated to wait for a better specimen and know when they see it, and that resources such as this community will exist to aid them in as much of it as we can.

[Marcthemusician]

I was reading a reply to a forum post asking if buying a Fly these days is worth it, and the reply was something to the effect of "It's comparable to owning a supercar. Parts are hard to find and expensive, you'll have nothing but headaches in maintaining it long term, but there's nothing else like it and if you know you know."

I owned a couple Steinbergers earlier this year, and the complexity of those is more extreme than the Parker Fly, but I think the two are similar in that you have to be an "active" owner of the guitar. If you want the feel of "playing on an oil slick" then you've got to care for your instruments. Hopefully people don't trend-ride, but these guitars have something real special about them.

Let's hope people do their due diligence.

[mmmguitar]

I owned a couple Steinbergers earlier this year, and the complexity of those is more extreme than the Parker Fly

Though it doesn't come up much due to this being a Parker forum, a number of us here are fans of Ned and his instruments, as well. In recent years, I sold all but one of my Steinbergers (an irreplaceable partsberger with a custom neck), and have been patiently watching since 2013 to see what new innovations Ned gifts to the guitar world (right now, it's new headless guitar tuners and a collaboration with Sankuer Composite Technologies for CF guitars and basses). Additionally, third parties such as Mitch Regnier, Matthew James Bean, RWB Precision engineering, and JCustom/Headless USA have used the resurgence in Steinberger and headless guitar appreciation to reproduce all manner of Steinberger hardware effectively unavailable since Gibson shelved most of the brand. The main thing that community is missing is someone to pick up where Steve Moser left off when he shut down Moses Graphite (the OEM carbon-graphite-phenolic neck supplier since the 1990s or so).

[Marcthemusician]

The main thing that community is missing is someone to pick up where Steve Moser left off when he shut down Moses Graphite (the OEM carbon-graphite-phenolic neck supplier since the 1990s or so).

One of my steinies was a GM1 I assembled using NOS parts. While sourcing the neck (by far the hardest part to find) I came across some info that apparently, secretly, and you didn't hear this from me, someone is working to bring replacement necks to market in the next year. Hint: they might currently be working on a guitar with Mr. S. But you didn't hear it from me.

[Marcthemusician]

I'm happy to say that the Piezo issue has been resolved.

I had to take the day off work for various errands since I'm going out of country for the weekend. I decided to stop by the local electronics supply store and see if they had the IC chip that was referenced by @ArcherRecording in this post:

viewtopic.php?p=7808#p7808

Reading this post made me ask my tech to poke at the chip with his multimeter while he was inspecting the pots and switches, and he confirmed it was giving wonky readings. Anywho, back at the electronics store, they had the chip (last one in stock) and also an IC Socket in case the next chip goes bad, and also the name of a local guy who does electronics repair work. A phone call and 10 minute drive later, he pulled the chip out and soldered in the socket in a matter of minutes. Then, voila! The guitar functions as intended! I'm so thrilled it was such a simple fix; I was dreading having to rewire the guitar entirely, considering how mint it is physically. Now internally it's great too. I'd like to add the hashtag #PiezoIssues because it was an important issue that was a cheap fix!

Thank you FlyClone members for all the helpful information!

[vjmanzo]

This makes me so happy to read, @Marcthemusician!! Congratulations!!

Thanks for sharing your experience troubleshooting this! I know it will give hope and help to others in the future