Making the Industry's Fastest Guitar Necks

Wood, the original miracle fiber, is at the heart of every Parker guitar.

"We marry the magic soulfulness of wood with rock-solid modern fibers… we combine organic and man-made materials to create a uniquely musical guitar that performs as no other can. It’s a lot of extra work, but we do it because we know you can feel and hear the difference." Ken Parker

Sleek, fast, smooth, unbelievably easy to play, the Parker neck is an outstanding example of modern design. But the roots of that design lie deep in the past.

Ken’s innovations are modern, but they’re also informed by his knowledge of traditional instrument making. When he began designing the Fly, he’d already built custom acoustic arch tops for many years, and repaired hundreds of vintage guitars, acoustic as well as electric. He knew from firsthand experience that the best vintage acoustic guitars were made as lightly as their size would allow. The idea is simple. A guitar must be strong enough to withstand the tension of the strings, yet remain vibrant and alive.

To successfully transfer this design philosophy to the solid body electric, Ken knew that (among many other things) he would have to come up with a way to reduce weight in the neck without compromising strength, clarity, or sustain. He found inspiration in the work of the original "luthiers"—builders of lutes.

Imagine visiting the shop of a stringed instrument maker in the 17th Century. Here the lute reigns supreme, but the craftsmen may also make baroque guitars, which bear little resemblance to those of today. The classical guitar is still several centuries in the future, the steel string even further, and not in the wildest fancies of any luthier has the electric guitar even been dreamed of.

Like today’s musicians, the players of the time want an instrument that "speaks quickly," responding immediately to nuances of touch. The best way for the luthier to achieve this is to build lightly. The bodies of lutes and baroque guitars weigh next to nothing.

Using a solid piece of mahogany or maple for the neck would severely overbalance these instruments toward the peghead. So for the neck, the luthier first fashions a core of tough, stable, lightweight wood. Over that core, he glues a veneer of hard, wear-resistant timber such as maple, rosewood or ebony. Another piece of hardwood veneer serves well for a fingerboard.

The frets of a lute are made of gut, as are the strings. Unlike fixed metal frets, they are simply tied around the neck. When a fret wears out, it’s a simple matter to replace it (as we will see, the advent of fixed metal frets was a mixed blessing for players, until Ken came up with a patented method of eliminating premature wear and tear on frets).

Voila. The neck is light, yet strong and wear-resistant.

Aside from body-neck balance, Ken had other reasons for considering an updated version of composite neck construction for his guitars—in this method he also saw possibilities for minimizing dead spots on the fingerboard, preventing certain types of warping, and doing something about premature wear and tear on the frets.

Fast forward to the 21st Century and the Parker factory, where the composite neck has been given new life-- courtesy of basswood, carbon-glass fiber, stainless steel, and an inspired reinterpretation of this centuries-old design.

Ken and his crew begin with a neck core of basswood. Ken’s selection of this particular timber was not made at random. He tried many others, and found that all were lacking in one respect or another. After much experimentation, he discovered that basswood had all the qualities needed. It’s light, strong, and has an excellent "memory"— it returns readily to its original shape after bending forces are applied to it, an important quality for any timber used for necks. Wood by its nature is never a perfect material, but basswood also does a great job of producing an even response at every fret, without "wolf notes" or "dead spots."

The basswood neck blanks are carved to shape on a computer controlled milling machine. CNC mills provide an efficient way to ensure uniform results in making parts, and have become a staple of every guitar manufacturing operation in the world, from the largest to the smallest.

A good deal of hand craftsmanship goes into the final shaping of the necks after the CNC mill does the initial shaping. We’ll look at these steps, and the way necks are joined to bodies, in the next article. For now, let’s move on to the modern equivalent of the lute maker’s wood veneer.

Carbon-glass veneer is only about half as thick as the wood veneer used by lute makers. On the Fly models, a continuous skin of this composite material covers the entire back of the body as well as the neck, an arrangement which has a strong effect on tone… but again, we’ll leave a further description of that for the next article.

A unique characteristic of the Parker neck is resistance to twisting, which can be seen in too many conventional necks. Ever take your guitar to a repair shop for a truss rod adjustment, only to be told that when one side of the fingerboard has the perfect amount of relief, the other side doesn’t? Twisting doesn’t usually show up until it’s too late to do anything about it—after the strings are on the guitar. You can’t get rid of it by adjusting a truss rod. Even if you plane the fingerboard flat again, the twist will reassert itself after you install new strings.

Many guitar manufacturers have tried to solve this common problem. Some use two truss rods, or non-adjustable stabilizer bars in addition to a single truss rod. Others have tried laminated wood necks. A few have even abandoned wood altogether. The fact is that none of these attempts at a solution to twisting works very well.

The fibers in carbon-glass veneer are oriented tri-axially. This creates a neck so stable and resistant to warping of any kind—including twisting-- that the main purpose of the truss rod is to allow for adjustment when you change string gauges, rather than the usual "seasonal adjustments" needed with ordinary necks.

The rod itself is made of high carbon tool steel. It weighs 1/6 as much as conventional truss rods, yet has a breaking strength of 1500 pounds.

Finally, there are the frets to consider. Parker’s process for bonding frets to fingerboard is unique, and patented. On every brand of guitar except Parker, the frets are made of "nickel-silver," a fairly soft alloy of copper, zinc, and nickel (it actually contains no silver). Each fret of this type has a beaded "tang," which is hammered or pressed into a slot in the fingerboard. After installation, the frets must be leveled to remove any irregularities, then reshaped with a file in an attempt to restore a symmetrical crown, and polished.

The use of nickel-silver frets is convenient for manufacturers. The softer the fret wire, the easier it is to install, level, and polish. For a guitar maker, nickel-silver is a user-friendly metal. For you, the player, it’s a different story.

Nickel-silver frets soon get dented from contact with the strings, and need leveling and polishing all over again—at your expense. No matter how costly the guitar, "normal wear and tear" on frets is never covered under warranty. After two or three of these expensive treatments, there won’t be enough metal left to allow for any further leveling, at which point the original frets will have to be replaced… which usually costs twice as much, or more, as having them leveled and polished.

Why should frets wear out so soon? Why should it cost so much to maintain them? Ken’s solution to this problem was to make an end run around it, by minimizing the tendency for it to happen in the first place. The first step was consigning nickel-silver to the dustbin. Parker frets are stainless steel.

Stainless steel is harder than nickel-silver. But more importantly, it is extremely tough-- which is not the quite the same thing as mere hardness. Stainless steel’s toughness gives it far greater resistance to denting and premature string wear than nickel-silver. If need be, stainless steel frets can be leveled and polished like ordinary frets… but this isn’t likely to be required for many years.

Why don’t other makers use stainless steel for frets, if it’s so great?

No maker of fret wire offers stainless steel frets. Stainless steel is too tough to be formed into standard fret shape with a tang. Using this material required a radical rethinking of the way frets are installed.

Here is a simplified account of the way it’s done. This patented process is actually more complex, but this short explanation will give you a good idea of why no other guitar plays like a Parker.

A perfect fret job must begin with the neck itself. In a guitar with low action, string rattling and buzzing is inevitable unless there is a certain amount of forward curvature (relief) in the neck. Other manufacturers plane or sand relief into the fingerboard prior to fretting, or simply rely on truss rod adjustments to allow for relief. These methods are just an extension of the mistaken notion that you can correct problems with frets by grinding them out of existence. Instead of using these stop-gap measures, Parker creates relief in the neck itself, before the fingerboard goes on.

The entire guitar, not just the neck, is locked into a custom-made swing arm sanding jig. This sophisticated tool allows replication of the instrument under string tension. The correct amount of relief is dialed in. The gluing surface to which the fingerboard will be joined is then sanded not only to the proper relief, but to the desired conical section (using the word "radius" in relation to the curve of a fingerboard is incorrect).

The fingerboard is made of the same carbon-glass composite as the veneer on the back of the neck (and, in the Fly models, the back of the body). At .020" it’s thicker, but still thin enough to conform perfectly to the neck’s gluing surface.

The frets themselves are glued to the surface of the fingerboard with another custom-made jig. This allows far more precise positioning of the frets, and hence more accurate intonation, than slotting a standard wooden fingerboard. The adhesive is extremely strong and resistant to heat.

The fret ends are then trimmed with a custom-made carbide cutter. Finally, the fretted fingerboard is glued to the neck, once again with an exceptionally strong modern glue. The results of this patented process are so precise that no leveling of the frets is needed. The perfect crown of the frets remains exactly the same as it was before installation. No fudging with files, sandpaper or steel wool. Of all the guitar manufacturers in the world, only Parker can make this claim.

The slogan "Nothing Plays Like a Parker" is not just hype. Five minutes of playing will prove it, more than all the words we could ever write. These necks really are "basswood lightning." Visit your local Parker dealer today, and find out for yourself.