Parker's Fly Bass Now in Full Production

Fly Bass 5 (Click for a close-up)

When Ken Parker began crafting the Parker Fly Bass prototype in the summer of 1992, he felt he was creating something special. "In keeping with the methods of perfection for all of our Parker instruments, the bass took us a considerable amount of time to get it exactly the way we wanted," says company founder Ken Parker. "The devil is in the details, and the painstaking process of perfecting the Fly Bass was a long one. But from all accounts the bass is an unqualified success with players."

The first fly Basses shipped in October 2002, filling backorders that began building in January 2002. Those initial basses sold fast, creating more backorders at Parker. Now the Fly Bass is in full production and Parker is beginning to catch up with the increasing demand for the product.

Requests for the bass continued to build throughout the summer as Aerosmith bassist Tom Hamilton toured the U.S. with a 2001 prototype transparent red Parker Fly Bass. Throughout the tour, Hamilton relied on the Fly Bass for half of the show.

With the now familiar yet unique body shape, the ultra-light weight Parker Bass at just 7 pounds features all of Parker's distinctive attributes. The bass offers a wide tonal range with two custom-wound DiMarzio Ultra-Jazz pickups and a Fishman active piezo pickup preamp/mixer system. Available in 4- and 5-string models, the Parker bass has a quilted maple veneer on the top and back, a layered spruce body, and a mahogany neck. A carbon-fiber composite fingerboard, stainless steel frets and Sperzel locking tuners provide the instrument's playability.

Parker has taken proactive steps to continue increased production on the Fly Bass by streamlining manufacturing on its core guitar models and creating the Parker Custom Shop to handle special requests from Parker guitar players.