Pics below!
This is a Parker Nitefly M from 2008, made in USA. I actually got this a few months back but I've finally got it put together how I wanted.
This model has a beautiful mahogany body with a natural satin finish. Dual humbuckers, piezo saddles, and standard tremolo springs rather than the leaf springs that Parker sometimes used, which could only be used for a specific string gauge.
The neck is probably the most Parker thing about this though as it's the carbon glass that Parker is known for. The neck has a really unique feeling. It looks like a high gloss finish, but it feels perfectly smooth and doesn't become sticky. When my hands warm it up it feels like it glides even better. If you look at it really closely it almost looks like a slight sparkle finish. The fretboard I believe is the same material, but I suppose it's treated differently since it doesn't have a glossy look. It's still perfectly smooth though. Combined with the jumbo stainless frets, bending is a smooth breeze. Of course being a bolt on version, it doesn't have the godlike neck joint that the Fly has. The neck joint is still quite comfortable though. My only complaint might be that it only has 22 frets, but I don't care that much.
Despite the mahogany body, the guitar is still very light. It's not as light as my Strandberg, of course, but lighter than my alder Kiesel strat my a significant amount (I haven't weighed any of them). The body isn't as thin as a traditional Fly but it's still relatively thin, and the extra girth helps with the rib-stabbing upper horn. It also lets regular pickups be used rather than the custom sized ones in the Fly. This is a huge bonus.
The stock pickups I think are still custom made by Dimarzio, but they were very much the definition of underwhelming. To my ears they were super compressed and did not respond well to pick dynamics, and the neck and bridge pickups sounded almost exactly the same. After a month or so, I decided I wanted something else, so I talked to BKP about a Silo set that I had been curious about, and after figuring out the measurements it looked like it would fit. I ordered the set at the start of April.
Fast forward 2 months, and after having my pickups sitting in Royal Mail's warehouse the entire time, customer support finally told me that the package had been lost. That's currently still getting resolved with BKP. In the meantime I put in a set of Guitarmory Foxbats I had laying around. For some reason they put both pickup leads through the same hole which is tight as all hell. I had to use a file to widen the hole to fit anything else in there. These sounded great, but despite the guitar having bigger routes than a traditional Fly, the routes are still somewhat shallow and the pickups sat too high for my taste.
With that lesson learned I ordered a set of Dimarzio Dreamcatcher/Rainmaker which is another set I've been interested in for the last year. These fit in perfectly and they sound great. They are quite dark but very clear. I've never heard anything quite like it and I'm loving them.
There was one more problem with the guitar though. I put the tremolo arm in as normal and everything was fine. When I pulled it out a while later, the socket that holds the arm completely shattered (Pic). The guitar was pretty much in mint condition, but this piece of plastic was apparently extremely brittle and gave way instantly. After a bunch of fiddling around I realized the top part of a Floyd Rose arm socket would fit in the hole, and the locking hex screw on the side would hold it in place. That's why there's now a Floyd bar on this Parker, which is awesome because I didn't like the Parker bar at all.
Overall very happy with this guitar now. It's the first time I've owned a piezo, which is really cool since I don't have an acoustic at the moment.
A couple quick sound clips I recorded:
Piezo:
https://soundcloud.com/avedas/parker-akogi
Jam track:
https://soundcloud.com/avedas/parker-fusion
And pictures of course:
This is a Parker Nitefly M from 2008, made in USA. I actually got this a few months back but I've finally got it put together how I wanted.
This model has a beautiful mahogany body with a natural satin finish. Dual humbuckers, piezo saddles, and standard tremolo springs rather than the leaf springs that Parker sometimes used, which could only be used for a specific string gauge.
The neck is probably the most Parker thing about this though as it's the carbon glass that Parker is known for. The neck has a really unique feeling. It looks like a high gloss finish, but it feels perfectly smooth and doesn't become sticky. When my hands warm it up it feels like it glides even better. If you look at it really closely it almost looks like a slight sparkle finish. The fretboard I believe is the same material, but I suppose it's treated differently since it doesn't have a glossy look. It's still perfectly smooth though. Combined with the jumbo stainless frets, bending is a smooth breeze. Of course being a bolt on version, it doesn't have the godlike neck joint that the Fly has. The neck joint is still quite comfortable though. My only complaint might be that it only has 22 frets, but I don't care that much.
Despite the mahogany body, the guitar is still very light. It's not as light as my Strandberg, of course, but lighter than my alder Kiesel strat my a significant amount (I haven't weighed any of them). The body isn't as thin as a traditional Fly but it's still relatively thin, and the extra girth helps with the rib-stabbing upper horn. It also lets regular pickups be used rather than the custom sized ones in the Fly. This is a huge bonus.
The stock pickups I think are still custom made by Dimarzio, but they were very much the definition of underwhelming. To my ears they were super compressed and did not respond well to pick dynamics, and the neck and bridge pickups sounded almost exactly the same. After a month or so, I decided I wanted something else, so I talked to BKP about a Silo set that I had been curious about, and after figuring out the measurements it looked like it would fit. I ordered the set at the start of April.
Fast forward 2 months, and after having my pickups sitting in Royal Mail's warehouse the entire time, customer support finally told me that the package had been lost. That's currently still getting resolved with BKP. In the meantime I put in a set of Guitarmory Foxbats I had laying around. For some reason they put both pickup leads through the same hole which is tight as all hell. I had to use a file to widen the hole to fit anything else in there. These sounded great, but despite the guitar having bigger routes than a traditional Fly, the routes are still somewhat shallow and the pickups sat too high for my taste.
With that lesson learned I ordered a set of Dimarzio Dreamcatcher/Rainmaker which is another set I've been interested in for the last year. These fit in perfectly and they sound great. They are quite dark but very clear. I've never heard anything quite like it and I'm loving them.
There was one more problem with the guitar though. I put the tremolo arm in as normal and everything was fine. When I pulled it out a while later, the socket that holds the arm completely shattered (Pic). The guitar was pretty much in mint condition, but this piece of plastic was apparently extremely brittle and gave way instantly. After a bunch of fiddling around I realized the top part of a Floyd Rose arm socket would fit in the hole, and the locking hex screw on the side would hold it in place. That's why there's now a Floyd bar on this Parker, which is awesome because I didn't like the Parker bar at all.
Overall very happy with this guitar now. It's the first time I've owned a piezo, which is really cool since I don't have an acoustic at the moment.
A couple quick sound clips I recorded:
Piezo:
https://soundcloud.com/avedas/parker-akogi
Jam track:
https://soundcloud.com/avedas/parker-fusion
And pictures of course:
