About the Fly Clone Project

[vjmanzo]

The Electric Guitar Innovation Lab (EGIL) began the Fly Clone project in 2018 as a means to maintain, recreate, and adapt knowledge regarding Parker guitars. Seeing the growing and eventual need for replacement parts and services related to these instruments and the likelihood that the owners of the Parker Guitars brand would discontinue support for their website and forum, the initial effort of the Fly Clone project was to develop this public forum, which existed in parallel with the official forum in 2019 until it and the official website were let go by the owners of the Parker Guitars brand.

FlyClone.com is a community providing open access to Parker-related information, which includes manuals, wiring guides, and other documentation. Our forum is generously moderated and maintained by volunteers and grows with each post from owners like you! Accessing this knowledge-base requires no registration or other entry-barriers, but please consider becoming a member our community...it's free! New products and adapted parts are developed by teams working in the EGIL as well as many others in our community.

The Fly Clone project is sponsored by the EGIL and supported solely through donations, the sale of Fly Clone products, and, of course, our community of volunteers.

Be sure to read the FAQs section, a bit about Parker Guitars history, and Ken's Corner

Note: If you are looking for stock OEM parts, we strongly recommend that you contact Mike Gallenberger at Gman.music on Reverb or wiguitar on eBay to see if the part you need is available in his stock.


You can Support the Fly Clone Project by making a donation.


-Goal one of Fly Clone Project is to model or source every component of the original Parker Fly guitar (1993-2003) as well as some aspects of the early "refined" (2003+) Parker Fly and some other models; this includes a comprehensive list of all bridge components, electronic components, screws, and so on. Producing CAD models of all components will ultimately allow us to fabricate parts through 3D-printing and machining methods.

Toward this goal, see the parts page where every Fly component is listed as well as our open-access repository of models.

-Goal two involves determining how best to make the “cloned” parts available to Fly owners through this website with a sustainable workflow. We are actively reverse-engineering, redesigning, and iterating on critical Fly components, some of which we have made available here.

-Goal three involves the creation of the advanced and specialized tooling used to create specific Fly components including springs, the fretboards, and stainless steel frets.

-Goal four involves the adaptation of existing parts for new functionality and operation, and ultimately: experiments toward new innovations.


The Fly Clone project will continue to exist as an independent research effort regardless of and unrelated to the official status of the Parker Guitars brand thanks to our community of members, contributors, collaborators, and moderators. Welcome to Fly Clone!


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Please note that all Fly Clone emails are sent from:

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flyclone@flyclone.com

Please add this address to your safe-sender list.

*All product and company names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. Parker Guitars, Parker, Fly, Fly Guitar, and NiteFly are registered trademarks of U.S. Music Corp, a division of Jam Industries, LTD. Use of these marks does not imply an affiliation with U.S. Music Corp, Parker Guitars, or its parent companies and does not imply an endorsement by these companies.

[billy]

[alber.t]

This is great news. Two talented friends working together, only good things can happen. Finally in 2019, this is the best news for the "Loyal Parkers Enthusiasts". Thank you for making it possible.

[vjmanzo]

Thanks, Albert--great to connect with you on here, my friend!

[Patzag]

Well what do you know!
This is awesome. I really wanted a home away from the home forum in case of disaster and you made that happen VJ. Awesome.
It’s funny to see “Newbie” under my name here though!!!
I’m looking forward to be an active member here.
Patrick

[vjmanzo]

Awesome, Patrick! It’s great to see you here! Totally agree: great to have a contingency!

You’re definitely not a newbie when it comes to Flys—not in real life or on this site; I think your new rank is more appropriate Thanks for being a part of this!

[Tangerine~Fly]

Awesome concept and very nice execution.

Thank you for taking on this project.

[Patzag]

Awesome, Patrick! It’s great to see you here! Totally agree: great to have a contingency!

You’re definitely not a newbie when it comes to Flys—not in real life or on this site; I think your new rank is more appropriate Thanks for being a part of this!

That’s funny! I like my new title!
And I see the old cronies all got it too.
That’s cool!

[vjmanzo]

@Tangerine~Fly : thanks for the kind words!

@Patzag : haha! Yes, It's a special distinction for all the old Fly obsessives who make/made the official forum awesome!

[rsdio]

I do not see the Printed Circuit Board or flexible circuit "tapes" listed. Is there any plan to clone these?

Are all of the PCBs simply still working to this day? Seems possible that none of them have actually broken.

On the other hand, it's well known that the flexible circuit "tapes" break easily. I've read many stories about Parker Fly owners who've had to work around a cracked tape. For another instrument that I co-designed, the Soundplane, we went through a handful of flexible circuit manufacturers before finding one that is high quality and very reasonably priced. As soon as I got my first Parker Fly - which has its output jack replaced with a non-original part - I wanted to design a whole tape to restore it.

Has anyone found a way to gain access to an unsoldered tape to take measurements? I assume that desoldering one of these rare birds would be risky, but it might be worth it. Some of the measurements - such as the parts that line up with connectors, pots and switches - don't need to be measured because the mechanical drawings for the parts themselves should have that information. Some of the widths are easy enough to measure inside the guitar. But getting the length right to make sure there isn't too much tension inside might take some trial and error.

Anyway, has any of this been looked in to?

[vjmanzo]

Hi @rsdio; welcome to the forum.

I am looking into this and am trying to obtain the circuitboard intact. I’m not sure what will come of this though; it would be great to come up with a solution that allows people to save the rev 1 Fishman piezo, but, as you noted, it’s not an easy process.

Yes, many of the original PCBs are still working to this day, though it’s also the case that many people on this forum have had to convert to point-to-point wiring, but, if left alone, the PCB should, in theory, hold up fine.

We’ll keep you posted about what comes of our digging into this area, but nothing to announce just yet. PM me if you’d like to get involved in this given your prior experience.

[SeverusStarkiller]

Hi,

I was told about some waiting list for trem springs? If there is one how do I join?

Thanks!

[vjmanzo]

Hi @SeverusStarkiller; welcome! There is no waiting list for springs.

[JMStaehli.com]

Just signed in. Great site.
I get a lot of calls from my website asking for help keeping these guitars working. I hope it is ok for me to refer your site towards their interests in my replies to them. I'm getting old. Tx

[vjmanzo]

Thanks, @JMStaehli.com; glad you’re a part of this!

[JMStaehli.com]

Glad there is still interest in these guitars and glad you folks make use of the work everyone puts into keeping these working. Remenber everyone, dirt and salt from your own playing needs to be cleaned out of the string saddles to keep things working well. Water, toothbrush and a can of compressed air is all that's needed. I clean more guitars to fix problems than I repair. It's always the moving parts.

[Kpope]

What a great site. Been looking for something like this on the PF for a while.

[RbtCFuller]

The one thing I didn't see here (but granted, I'm old my eyes are not what they once were) is discussion of cloning the actual BODY of the Fly.

Seems that would be one of the easier steps in truly cloning a Fly. Between Ken's YouTube channel and other historical Parker Guitar YouTube posts, best practices in carbon fiber are publicly available. Scanning a Fly and developing a CNC program (modified so it's not a 1:1 recreations of Ken's work - out of respect) would seem to be relatively simple as well.

Or, have I run up against a gentlemen's agreement: "We will clone the parts, but the guitar body is the creator's - and the creator's alone."

[vjmanzo]

Hi @RbtCFuller and thanks for the thoughts on this. Similarly, when we launched this project in 2018, I was drawn to the idea that we’d eventually be making all sorts of adapted Fly bodies to serve as “shells” for all of us to tinker with, so the essence of what you wrote in your post isn’t lost on me. I still want this as do many of us.

Fly Clone is supported entirely by volunteers and, largely, by students working in my research lab at WPI. Fly Clone is not a company or a non-profit, and it’s not financially supported by external sponsors, the university itself, or any other stakeholders. As you might imagine, hosting our forum alone is an expense as is the purchase of the materials we use in the testing and development of components. As a research lab, since Fly Clone is not a project that's funded externally through grants, we have been able to offset some of our costs for this project through donations and the sale of some small components like the Flex PCBs, but by and large, the Fly Clone Project is a labor of love project for our lab just as it is for everyone that helps support it, which includes members who contribute posts to what I consider Fly Clone’s greatest asset: the knowledge-base we share through this forum, which we all have helped to create and continue to strengthen. Having said that, when Fly Clone project goals have educational merit, we’re able to spin up a credited project at our university and get student researchers and practitioners involved. This has been the main catalyst for the research that's gone into larger projects like the spring development, fret/fretboard replacements, and the flex PCBs.

Or, have I run up against a gentlemen's agreement: "We will clone the parts, but the guitar body is the creator's - and the creator's alone."

No, I don’t personally have any ethical reservations about producing Fly bodies and I think Ken would be supportive. Ken has been part of our lab now for many years, but it’s not to work on Fly Clone things; still, he contributes information to Fly Clone and provides insight into many of the things happening in our lab while he continues to pursue his non-Fly interests. Having done some tests over the last few years toward developing Fly bodies previously, I am certain that it would require significant capital investment at this point to do it well, or it would have to wait until we’re further along with releasing some of the more pressing components.

Scanning a Fly and developing a CNC program (modified so it's not a 1:1 recreations of Ken's work - out of respect) would seem to be relatively simple as well.

Creating Fly bodies (or something close) would also require a significant amount of time and effort by the people in our Fly Clone community. I’ll share, respectfully, that in my experience, most people’s perceptions of the ease of 3D scanning and CNCing musical instruments don’t take into account how complex and time-consuming they are—even producing simple geometries with professional tools. Here is an example of a student of mine adapting one of Ken’s archtop bridges from a handmade part to something produced by a CNC—as shown in the video, this project was a success, but it took a lot of work and a long time like most things tied to academia.

We have a thread here about some of our preliminary body modeling efforts, which are largely on hold. Even if we were handed a 100% accurate model of a Fly and fully debugged CNC toolpath (that’s a story for another time!), the amount of time spent getting from those assets to a physical guitar body is considerable. Here’s another grant-funded project we’re working on through which we’re 3D scanning guitars—as shown in the video, it’s a lot of work. The amount of time we’ve spent using hand scanners and table scanners and special sprays to help diffuse light while scanning is significant—and when all is said and done, a person still goes into the model and moves little triangles back into place, so that a toolpath operation does allow an outlying number to crash the CNC cutting tool into the bed of the machine.

I hope this helps explain where we are as a project and a bit of where we’d like to go. Thanks for continuing to be a part of it.

[RbtCFuller]

"What? I can't do it my basement, in a weekend?! Oh bother..."

I greatly appreciate all the resources you've provided. Perhaps I should put my money where my mouth is, and see how I could contribute to advancement of the project.

Keep you posted!