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ing forest road that skirts the highlands of the Hudson River' Its a trap"ezoidal structureof concreteand glass,set into a steep slope like a piece of_qtartz, and servesParker as a kind of Fortress of Solitude' "r'm in hiding," he told me' "I

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ported only by a golden post.Thesoundholehad beennarrowedto a crescent casters are still made the same way. and moved to the side,whereit hung rike Acoustic guitars with steel strings. have a waning moon. parker calledhis instrubeenarou"ndlo.rger-thef *.rJdeu"l-;;;4f,. orive Branch,,,but as design opedin ii".t..nl'rru.rar.a, *a ,;;;. 9. 9+ go it looked more rike a decrefined by th. M".tir, .o-prny rn tt. Tantion war. It looked like something of nineteenlthirties-and haue chrrg.d ,h;;-pi;sso orJuan Gris might have wen less. "so-. p1.t11ioilaou, ,rung, painted: an old, familiar form made sudhru. ,-ro,b..., tri.d,,, lark r says.,you ienly, startlinglymodem. -"'ii..6fr". pick up a violin and it weigh, ,i*r..r, Branch is an a6empr ro
THE NEV YORITER, MAY 14,2OO7

parker ,A guitar inagreement Ken says,good is 'r-) ^-6""w64'14'LJLrruEtterneu'attoxtsef. ,, uitbitsetf ; |ffiltr "r?*lt1ff* -*ingbehindhim,likeanJd
E sailorwith a tender back' and speaks a in f boomy baritone that sometimesrisesto a ! high' sweetgiggle' His manner is more ! than genial' though it can't disguisehis I impatiencewith fools' 9 Guitars are often foolish devices, Parker says'Their bodies are ungainly, ! $ their neckseasilywarped, th.it int#aaJn = unreliable.The great majority are factory

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do for acoustic guitars what the Fly tried to do for electrics,but it's in every sense an even riskier venture. It's a virtuoso's instrument for a PoPulist music; an acoustic device for an amplified age; a radical reinvention of a design all but abandoned decadesago. When I first saw it, I asked Parker what he was thinking as he built it. Did he imagine that sorieday everyonewouldmake guitars like thii, or that no one else in the world could make such an instrument? He was quiet for a moment' seemingly ,t r-p"d. Then he shrugged' "Both," he said. the headstockinto the concrete a fat-bottomed designfrom 1916' "This ground is rock and roll!" Parker says' "You floor. A "Murphvized" Gibson sells for would think that guitar playerswould be twice the.ott of u regular Les Pau| and open and brave and experimental' And signed Jimmy Page replicas they are not. As a group' they are not' Murphy's (complete with cigarette burns) have Thatguywith the PuryleMohawk? He go.r.'fo, as much as eightY thousand *orrt piuy anlthing made after 1960' havebeen Fender'sagedgr,ritars Wait a minuie, dudet.You were made Iolats. Customerscanchoose successfirl. eouallv after 1960." of wear, from afternoon this winter, I watched from"various degrees One Classic ("played maybe a few a man named Tom MurPhY sYstemat- Closet per year and then carefully put icallv beat up a brand-new Les Paul' times to Heary Relic ("playedwigMuiphy, who is fiftY-six, works for "*"y'') on a nighdy basis")to the Rory orously Gibson s custom, art' and historic diviStratocaster("worn He has thick forearms and ruddy Gallaqher Tribute sion. wood"). When I asked Matt features and a boyish devotion to the to th; IJmanov, whose guitar store has been a rFhese ouqht to be excellenttimes guitar heroes of his youth. Everyweek Village fot forty t h e c o m P a n Ys e n d s t e n o r fixture in Greenwich I fot guitar designers.Theirs are the i , t * o , peoplebuy theseinstruments, why guitars to Murphjs workshop, years, rnort pof,.ilut instmments in the world, twenty noise."Ninetyper Illinois, and he sendsthem he made an impatient ,rr.d by .ontttry crooners' gothic rock- in Marion, buiiness is male-oriented," looking as ifthey'd been played cent of this ers, and African soukous players alike' back I visited, he began he said."In my opinion, most purchases Some three million guitars were sold in for fiftvvears.'v\4ren words: the zipper some lines into the lacquer are governedby four the United Stateslast year-as many as by .tciti.tg vntharazorblade, to mimic the crackle is down." all other instmments combined-and Vintage guitars, authentic or not' old finish. He shaved the edges the best vintage guitars are extraor- of an are hard to judge on their own merits' fingerboard, so that theylooked dinarily valuable. Twenty years ago,,a offthe to us asa mixture ot by iountless earsplitting solos' Their sound comes oristine 1959 Gibson Les Paul might worn 'have acoustics,musicianshiP a bunch of keYs and memory and sold for ten thousand dollars; Then he took Without "Purple over the surface,like a spi- and wish-firlfillment. shook them todav. it can fetch four hundred thouChile," the squealand over glass.To imitate Haz.d' or"Yoodoo ,uttd. Attd yet, along the way' guitars der skittering might seemless wear, he held an old buckle moan of a Stratocaster Most vearsof belt havebecome deeplyconservative' without "Tangled UP 1" the back and whacked \t a few appealing; electric guitars look like Les Pauls or uguinrt might sound merelY with a hammer' Then he fliPPed B1,r.," u Martin and Stratoca=sters, three-quarters of all tines pretty. Still, the best old instruments the guitar uPside down and slowlY 'hut"'^ acoustic guitars are dreadnoughtsharmonic richness that transcendssubjectivity.Vintage Telecasters have been hooked up to oscilloscoPes and found to generate more oveltones than newer guitars, and even the smallest old Maitins can ring as loudly as 'You lFl could put a blindfold church bells. 'Oh mY God' on and you would saY' T. J. Thompson, a that is so beautifiil,'" *RA guitar-maker in Concord, Massachuietts, told me. "It sings,it's balanced'it's musical. Every chord you play sounds magical." Thompson restoresvintage acoustlc zuitars and makesexceptionalnew ones' iP*k t calls him "an angelically gifted builder.") He estimatesthat only about one in twenty prewar Martins has that mesmerizingsound' but that thosealone could drive the vintage craze' "They shouldcomewith awaming"'he told me' "IfI out one ofthose old &eadnoughts in vo.ri h"nd, yotill never forget it' Yotill io.rg for it' and youll sell any holdings in 'Andjust housdoyou ex?ect beco?71e tndn' son' rna.de to -a ref estateyou have, and your marriage education?"

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will end, and your kids worit go to college. But you'll be happy, becauseyou have a dreadnought." Guitar-makers, or luthiers, as they like to be known, have tried to isolate the magic in older instruments, only to find that itlies largelyin ageitseH Time transforms a guitar's materials. The wood grows stiffer and more resonant. The lacquer develops hairline cracks,relaxing its straitjacket grip on the wood. The magnets in pickups weaken and rust, deepening and mellowing the tone. A new guitar is like a novice choir: a gathering of disparate parts, held together under pressure,straining to carry the sametune. The more it's played,the more it settles into its true voice. The neck and body,joints and braces,bridge and fingerboard stop fighting one another and start to sing in unison. A good designer can duplicate some ofthese effects.But the sound ofa vintage guitar is partly an echo of what's been losr Brazi\an rosewood, elephant ivory, old-growth spruce and mahogany-the worlds best acoustic materials, now all but unavailable. "I have a piece of veneer from the twenties or thirties," Thompson told me. "I pick it up and I'm just in awe. I can hardly bend it. It has the weight ofwood but it feelslike ceramic. And I'm supposedto find a piece ofwood in the world today that's forty-thousandths ofan inch thick and that stiff? You know what? It doesrit exist." before I met Parker, my NTo,long I \ wife's uncle Ken offered to build an elecffic bassfor my son. Ken is a retired economist in Virginia with a firlly equipped wood shop in his basement. He built a lovelyversionof a'59 Les Paul a few years ago, and he seemedhappy to have another project. My son, a vintage bufflike any other, decided that the new instrument should be a copy ofhis teachels bass:a hollow-bodied Gibson from the nineteen-sixties,with Fholes like a violin and a huge, echoey sound. (Its pickups are sometimescalled "mudbuckers.") My job was to buy the materials and sendthem to Ken. Ive probably spent a couple ofhundred hours in guitar stores over the years. Even a megamall can't seem to rob them of their charms: the flamboyanceofthe instruments, the studied

scruffiness of the stafl the eager racket of half a dozen noodling guitaristsJohn Cage for boneheads.I usually try to find the most expensiveguitar in the shop, then I whale away on some riffs widely consideredkick-ass when I was in high school. Sometimes, one of the clerks comes over and asls me to stoD. The bassproject unloosed this compulsion. The longer I looked for parts, the deeper I ventured into a realm of gearheadsand guitar fanatics, acoustic savantsand reverseengineers. Every trick of modern scienceand forensic ca{pentry, it seemed,was being used to reproduce the sound of nineteen-fifties technology. One luthier, on an island in Puget Sound, dipped his pickups in a Crockpot firll of wax and wound them with a sewing-machinemotor to mimic the handiwork of the old Gibson factory. Another froze his metal pickups to three hundred degreesbelow zero, insisting that the molecules would realign asthey do with age.Somebuilders blasted their instruments with giant speakersto simulate the effects of years of playing. Others swore by "timeless timbel': oldgrowth maple and otherwoods, dredged from the bottoms of northern rivers and lakes. Some ofthe worlds finest electric gritars, I read in a newsletter called The ToneQuest Report, aremade in the town ofHyvinkdii, in soutlem Finland. Their designer,a mad young Finn namedJuha Ruokangas, uses flamed Arctic birch, pickups wound by a German guitar guru, and inlal's as exquisite as Faberge eggs. (One showsa scenefrom the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala.) The wood is thermo-treated-slowly heated,in a processpatented by a Finnish university, to mimic the curing effects of time-and coatedin a lacquer designedto crack and craze like a fifty-year-old finish. The crowning glory of a Ruokangas,though, is the nut-the thin strip at the top ofthe neck that lifts the strings above the fingerboard. In some of the best old instruments,the nut is made of elephant ivory and is said to lend an ineffabie resonance to the tone. In a Ruokangas,it's madefrom the shinboneofawild moose. '\Me skin them, chop them into pieces, and boil them in mv vard on an oDen fue," Ruokangas toldthe edtor of Ti neQuest."Moosebone is the best." The Finn was an inspiration. My

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THE NEV YORI(ER. MAY 14.2OO7

son, I'11admit, was showing signs ot wanins interest, but the bass project foreed:ah.ad. I bought thick boards of Afican black limba-"the holy grail of tone woods," according to one builder' I ordered Dark Star PickuPs, handmade to replicate a Swedish design used by the bratefirl D"ad' I found the origini patent d.t"*t"g: for the Gibson bass,and a basststtn Louisiana who could wire the controls with vintagecorrect comPonents. For the nut, I did Ruokangas one better. I located a man in southern Alaska with a cache of fossilized walrus ivory, five thousand Years old. When I had a chunk shipped to Ken's house, he ,.r,r'*. a digital picture of it-blacktit i the tip of a charred ened with "g. getting alitdeworried, he spear.Hewa-s wTote.

it has to be strong. Things dont alrruays work out. Even iflhe neck doesn'tbend, the bridge doesn t poP off, the strings don'tbvzz, the guitar maY resPoncl poorly to playing. Its wood may vibrate so well only at certain frequencies, some souttd weaker than others' It strinqs *"u f,"'u. dead spotsor "wolf tones"that sound muffied or unPleasant' In some bot{uitars, the neck and body, top and produc. sound waves that are out quitars for Pat MethenY, t"om, peals and troughs flatten , Iold me when she visited ofphase: their witen th.y collide' In othone daY.) Most luthiers on. "rroth., builds up' wave on wave' wax almost mYstical about ers,the sound guitar is in agreementwith itwood and the hand-built "A good self,"Parker said. qualities of their instruments. Parker comPares to achievethat isn t clear' his to speedboatsand race T T ow best is ceflo is a cello, a sousaPhone cars-engineering chal- .f-IA but the guitar has yet to lenges as much as artistic a sousaphone, In the three cen"I'm a tJolmaker,"he says'"I find itsbhtonic form. ones. Antonio Stradivari and Giuturies since make tools for musicians." perfectedthe violin, the that morning was to cawe seppeGuarneri The task ft"t moryhed from a thin-hipped guiiut the top ofa new guitar. Parkerbeganwith fittt fig*. to a plump matron' trading of Adirondack sPmcea thi& board double strings for single strings,,in sets the flat on the bottom and Peakeddown T told Parkeraboutthe walrusivory five,iix, or more. Tricked out in middle like a roof-and placed it in of four, me I fust time I visitedhim. He gave a the or mother-of-pear1, it has he calledhis "duplicating machine"' tortoiseshell look of mild pity, like a doctor who'd what enough for aristocrats and and a been good thendisap- This consistedofan electric carver before, these seen strumming coyly beryrnptoms running along the.same warbli"ng ladies, pearedinto thi back of his workshop' dummy stylus, When cheaply made' it The carver moved back and tween v-erses. iryh.tt he returned,he was holding a st"el beam. an instrument of the people' over the spruce,while the stylus-ral has been larse grayishbone. He'd done some forth is no more than a cowbell," archei mold that Parker had "The guitar .r,rf.*"o.ti*.nts of his own, he said,in over an Inquisitor Don Sebastidn As the stylusroseup and down the the Sfanish "I the earlynineteen-eighties' thought' made. de Covarrubias Orozco complained in conceiv- mold, the carver moved with it' Sttip Py O.K., I'il makeoneout of every "so easyto pl"y' . ' that there is the board began to assumethe 1611, ablematerial,then seeif I can tell the strip, a not astable tad wtro is not a musician"' nickelsil- shapeof a qende arch. "It's like mowing I difference.triedwood,brass, much hasn't changed' lawn!" Parker shouted, over the low roar That ver, elephantivory-eveq'thing'' The Classicalguitarswith gut strings hnthe machinery. bonein his handwasan ostrichfemur, of ally found tieir Stradivari in the midA zuitar isntt an especiallyhard inby from a bird raised a friendin CaliforSpanish lua haqpsidrord," nineteenth centur/, in the to build-'Try nia."He thoughtitwould makesuperior ,mr*!nt de Torres Jurado, whose Antonio said-but it leaveslittle room thier I nut material,-so cut it up and made,a Parker used. But steel strings mechanism is simple: six designs are still error. The of couple partsout of it," he sai-d'."And' for stouter structure' bomea stretched taut acrossan oPen demanded .rrou kno*' it's iust a bone' It barelY strings, a shoewhen struck This sets time in the eighteen-seventies' vibrate it He Lakesa differenie." handed to me' chaniber. K^u^ ^o named Orville store clerkin the top moving, amplifying the vibrawhY guitars "Changing this is like a girl thinking guitar into a pump Gibson began to wonder turning the her that if ;he"changes nail polish she'll tions, tttot. like violins' A vioweren't -ud" that pushes iund waves out through be beautifi'rl." inherently stronger The strings alone make lin's arched top is win- the sound hole. It waslatemorning,and a Pale flat top. It needslessbracs no sound, so everything depends than a guitar and give ter sun had risen outside'The light almost There's no ine, solt canvibratemore freely the wood's resonance' cameslanting through the workshofs on focussedtone' Gibson more to keeP the notes from dYing, no " irorrg.., hieh windows, kindling the sawdustin bow mad. f,is first archtop guitars in his to sustain them' or bellows the hired th! air. Parkerhad populated shop mouthpiece of ges- sparetime, then quit his job and wood binsand The plaver makes the smallest with his preoccupations: increased' In the nine*hack the string and that's siaff as orders tube amplifiersand bass t rr.rjtor, tool cabinets, a brilliant luthier named Parker said-and hopes the guitar teen-twenties, a scrolls, tandembicycleand a wooden it," Llovd Loar refined Gibsons designs' from the raf: will turn them into music' rowing shell suspended f-holes and other violinlike To resonatewell, the wood hasto be "ddine t"rs. Along the walls,abattalionof castBy touche"s. the thirties, archtops were saw,table saw' thin. To withstand the strings'tension,

drill press,lathe-stood with clamps at and b-lades the readY' of Parker'sfirst jobs was in a One factoryin Rochester, grandfather-dock neverlost his love fot atcane ind he's 11. machinery. srills most of his own

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MAY 14,2OO7 THE NEV YORKER,

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the most popular guitars in the country' They weie larger and louder than flattopr, y.t more articulate-Perfect for fleet-fingered jazz solosthat could cut throueh a blare of horns' TheY gave chordi a ringing punch and bass runs a penetrating snap: Maybelle Carter playedan archtop on earlycounffytunes -[k"'\Mildl"ood Flower." To a luthier in the thirties, archtops must have seemedlike the capstoneof quitar development.Then magnetic ii.krrot .u*e along and the instruit,.nrt changed aga1n.An amPlified guitar can't b. too resonant or it will ,"qrle"l with feedback. Fender solved this problem by giving electric guitars solid bodies; Martin kept most of its flattops purely acousticl Gibson's archtoos fell-somewherein between' Some *"r" *ade with dull' laminated toPs; others had holes cut in them for pickups, or solid blocks of maple running dt*n the center to dampen the sound' "lf you had a Martin, a good one, and then picked up a Gibson Super400, you *orlldr,, have the slightest idea whY anyone would play that," Parker says' "Iis qigantic, but it doesn't sound gieant[.-Vvhere is the fun in that?" Park!1s new guitar was pardy an attemptto reclaim tlat history-to seewhat archtops miqht have become if the electric "They zuit- nid never been invented' he saYs' ,*ort of became dinosaurs," 'Theywere labelled asthe leastversatile of all guitars. But in mY oPinion an ar.htof properlybuilt is a chameleon'It

ON TIME Time canbe told in the openingof a flower, Trumpet of dawn,flugelhornof the sun explosions Sinkine down. Noiseless i-n attentive eye.And the ear Greet Is a flower, too, a welcomehome for echoes, Cauldronof starlight, and cackles. Kisses, and blaring cry, whateverbrushes Tincture a unlatches doorwaY Your senses by Scoured salt,vanishingasyou plunder So The coffeisof sleep. you will know meansto 6e utterly free,floating What it Without a hope,floating in hope,a medium $lven Fit for the beingyou havebecome, The bed you havemade,the raceyou won'
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F OUN INNO

can do anltthing." When-Parker had finished with the duplicating machine, the spruceboard *", u torrgh arch about a quarter inch thick. He grabbedit with both handshis fingers were a good knuckle longer than mine-and flexed itlike a Pizza pan. Guitar toPs are made from soft woods, like spruceand cedar,thatvibrate easilv:their backs and sides are made from hardwoods, like rosewood and maple, that aregood at reflecting sound' Pa.Lt held the board up to his ear and in came_ofage. the nineteentapped it with his forefinger' It gave a parker "It's a -F s.lrenti.s, when guitarswere sorelyin duli tine. "Hear that?" he said' little idealism. He grew up in minor second." He hummed the two need of a the South Shoreofl'onglsland, notes of the interval below his breath' Islip, on and the eldest son of a Methodist minister Then he Picked uP a hand Plane more progressivethan his conwent to worlg shaving thin ctuls from the notably 'You want it to get excited sreqation. The Parkersjoined the March inner surface. in 1963, and received about playing every note," he said' "At a 6nWashington,
88 MAY 14,2OO7 THE NEV YORKER,

quarter inch, it won't get excited about playing one." ' brr"t the next two weeks, Parker would plane offanothereighth ofan inch o, *o.., till the top rang at the faintest The thintouch. Itwas a perilousprocess. ner the wood, the fuller the soundParkels tops are lessthan half asthick as some luthiers'-but a shaving too many could destroythe top or suddenlydampen it. "The real question is, when do you stop?" he said. Stradivari seemsto have carvedhis violins so the tops and bottoms ranewith the samenote when tappedF b.lo* middle C. But Parker had "r, up on easyprescriptions'uEveryone given f,", u t..t t recipe,"he said."Everyoneis tqilng to do sciatch-for-scratch re-prodrr.t[ttt of ancient instruments' If you had any guts, Youd make a nice new instrument-and iet the wodd beat it up for three hundred years."He lifted the board 'You dont get aqain,flexed,and tapped. 'You get there tier. bv secrets,"he said. aY by doing er.t t hing better."

death threats for taking on a black student pastor."On the spectrumfrom Bible thumper to socialhelper, my father is way side,"Parkertold me' on the social-helper "No thumping at all." His mother had a master'sin religion and education fromColumbia and was, if anything, more of an activist. Until she died, two yearsago' she had a gold P\T nouth plasteredwith bumper stiikers-"MyJob Is to Comfort the Disntrbed and Distub the ComfortabldLthat Parker now drives. He took me to lunch in it one day. "I wonder if the PresidentBush misses lettershe used to get from Grace K. Parker, Methodist Woman," he said. After graduating from high school, in 1970, Parker spent the better part ot a year ^t Goddard, an alternative college in northem Vermont. He took a classin furniture-building and made a fretless bassfor his brother Alan. But the schools long-haired h.yd"y had passed('It Y"t afte-rthe nude classpicturd'), and Parker found better fumiture-makers elsewhere' Rochester, then asnow' was a city fi'rll of musiciansand craftsmen-the Eastman School of Music and the RochesterInstitute ofTechnology were there' Parker worked at the grandfather-clock factory for fwo y"att, then tried his hand at making five-string banjos and kinetic furniture. He took some group guitar but was never more than a serlessons,

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Lutes *.r.ih. St that archtop ,1.,..^1"1?j:li|11 *."1T,.,'i"xrril',iil?ffiilr',:*: rhat archtop u*,n", his was his *, the g'rr* "ro.rrt.r,of ,f,. You're irv',?.,op *u'v iltyl+:rd"y rh.y'*J,. ilC Tl,* teardrop".J p*r.., r,ad watctred Meadow make
in 1995.) When parker.iro#q:, shop,DAquisro wasused to visiislt from acolltes.He told parker tfr"t fr. aa"{ needan apprentice. Th, J""*.,f;d, ,first yoy irurt an ex_ l.tt.rrt.nrrirt, and then ,poil "ppty ir.,,; Bu, *r*rn. thoughtaboutlutes.

hippie made' and had :F ,r;;r;;;;jyi.rig' so?arr<etrrr"*.J'irtj.r, " r"r"rr,;;;;;hry.ars, repair s", hequi_ -};q#iri'rr*rr.* neighborins oni*g rrr""a. town a scratch_ro goback,hot tothehnr^..._r^_ f:i-:*:-.1*"r:rrn"-i,?ffi*rf, ouire ^_ nad apprendced Iohn under D'fs.ti9o, *lo* ,i6.rr,"iti.Jri_o the other giant of pos-nvar -.t to! a.J .Jrr'i r"r*_ents. "*., __ He readmanuals on

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store'Greenwich t1i1{; 3;"* connecticurhad exHe #j|''lt::f*:i},Y:: vrrug.. in u-"".' ;.iffi;:ffi:;r$lr#:l*ff$,rew toldhimthat rooked it ur..i"*.J'i"f"

-oi.uing rh.i, workonprewar Martins .ti1":"t*tars. parkerhad otherideas. lilrr"*li.**d;:ffi;.quitand *i'ilo into his grandfathels house in

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"Joining childhood searing rnernojrs such The as 6lass Casileand Running Scissors with canes theimpressive with \riving people, Dead a fascinating, gritty, hilarious ...,, read *teslie Moryan Steiner. Los Angeles best-selling &nes editorof MannyWars

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THE NEV YORKER, MAY 14,2OO7

drifwood than like a modern dancer: shouldersthrown back, thin arms contorted, every excesstrimmed away' Its headstock had been whittled to the Its width of two 6.ngers. sideswere bent asif poisedto leapinto the air' When I'd ordei.d materialsfor my son'sbass,the wood alone had weighed forty pounds uncut. Ifwe were lucky, the finished instrument would weigh between eight and nine pounds-about as much as a Les Paul. The Flyweighed half that, yet its lightnesswas less startling than its and "Let go ofa Stratocaster the balan"ce. liked to headstock hits the floor," Parker sav."f,et qo of a Les Paul and it hits your ."t." Tn."RY sat quietlY on mY ht1no hands requireJ-and waited to be

wood and then You add stiffness-as much as you want' in any direction you want. Idsquite the Paintbrush"' The compositeshelPed solve an old luthier's conundrum. The neck of a guitar has to be thin enough to be played comfortably, yet strong enough to keep from bending. It has to resonatewith everv note, but not so much that its oscillaiions interfere with the sound waves "If themselves. changing a guitar s nut is like using pink nail polish," Parker said' "then ma'kingthe neck stiffer is like losine forty-five pounds." Most guitar made of a heavy hardwood,r.iLt "t. rock maple or mahogany-reinforced with a steel rod, like the sPine in a human neck. The FIY was built more like an insect, with an exoskeleton' It played. ' light and stiffyet resonantthat it Parkels guitar was made with fibre- was so could sound almost like an acoustic guiqlassand carbon graphite, rather than inplayed with the piezoelectric iestines arrd parchment, but it follow-ed tar when Its pickups that Fishman designedfor it' the lutemaler's basic equation' *i,.n playedwith its magneticpickstrength lay in its surfaces.The carbon br, ups, it could sound like an electric guiwith a.rd g'l"rs dbt"t *.t. impregnated sustain. with er<cePtional resin and laminated onto a coreof sprucet tar Parker uttd Fith*".t shopped their Doplar, or basswood.Parker had discovprotot''pe around in the late eighties and .t a A. technique in the mid-eighties' qo, *;.tp funding from Korg, a maker when he visited a maker of racing sculls In 6fkeyboards and synthesizers' 1990, with Larry Fishman, the engineer who Parker moved to Boston, set uP a iaclater designed the Fly's electronics' tried to retool his perfectionist Within a iareek,Fishman had made a torv. and *"thodt for massproduction' It &dnt pickup out of the material and Parker Fly's innovations made it easirad made a zuitar. "Itwas almostlike in- work The but harder to build---carbon venting a nJw sp"ci"s of wood," Parker ier to play '{ou fibre was fractious stuff-and Parker, startwith the attributes ofthat said.

after decadesofrepairing factory guitars' couldrit compromise on quality' After thirteen years ofproduction delaysand budget dlficits, personnelproblems and hundred-hour week-"Never went out' Never took a vacation. Always a knot in mystomach over somethingLthe comp"r,y*"t still in debt.'The whole equa'TVe were iion *"t off" Parker said. building ten-thousand-dollar guitars for twentv--five hundred. I thought that people would naturally gravitate toward ih"* b..urrte they played really, really The fact is well. But thatwasn't the case. dont needsomething.spemost players cial. They need something Proven"' When Washbum Guitars bought the company, in 2003, it moved the factory to lllinois, added more traditional guitars to the Parker line, and had some made in Asia. The line is nowmodesdyprofitable, I was told. But the Fly is still too iconoclastic for mass appeal' "People said, lMhy does it have io look so wacky?"' Parker told me that afternoon in his shop."And I said,'l cant possiblydesign something that looks as wacky as the Telecastei and Stratocaster did in the nineteen-fifties' People were in flames about them!"'He reachedupand rubbed his eyes.Just talking about those years save him a headache,he said' Then he iook the Fly from my lap and put it back in its case."I'm still proud of this," he said."And when I look at it I never think of that stuff. Yeah, sure, I could have made something that looked like a Strat' But. for better or worse' that's just not me. lm not going to change something a litde bit." T t has been thirty years since Parker I hrt d.*rot.d himseHto archtoPs,and the market for them hasn't much imoroved. "Ids flat as a fuckin pancake," Matt Uma.tov told me, aswe were driving along the Hudson one morning' Uianov is fifty-nine now, with gqnthwhite hair that hangs nearly to his shoulders and an excitable Brooklp accent' . He loves archtops, but saysthey have limited appeal.'You can pickup a good fattop for fine thousand dollars and pretendio be a cowboY-PlaY'Freight Train' and impress yourself' But you to cant pick up an archtop and pr-etend be a jazzPlaYer. Can t be done"' Non.bf thit seemsto worry Parker' His new guitar takesmuch longer to build

than a muchv dollars violins guitars haveto to outp be mor rr you JohnG Branch l record further knew t Guths By1 an imp virtuos blondl ofthe l his 194 sidem andJa the Oli a stun madef fifty th had ev an S.U of his r litde st frames smallv to him be thre summ The one en hung f stand rack ol ments

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archtopthat DAquisto riad madefor him in 1989, worth morerhan fifty thousand dollars.T. J. Thompson had even drivendown from concordin anS'U'v. firll ofprewarMartins one and of his newguitars. looked,rou.rd, He " litde stunned, brinkingbehindwire eyes frames."Ken doesn'tdo anythingin a smallway,"he said.'lAlheni ntrt iuru.a to him aboutthis,I thoughtit wourd just be threeof us.Now ids

than a flattop, requiresthree times as comesfrom a hollow log or a digital key_ much wood, and sellsfor thirty thousand board..As the_players p'"sr.d ,ti gui,-, dollars-less than the costofthe bestnew around, somebasicdifferences emirged. violins,but a fortune compared with most The archtopsprojected their voice"s_ guitars.To succeed, parker says, will as it they threw them acrossthe room like have to do eveq,thing better. It will have Broadway singers-while the flattops to outperform the best old archtops and enveloped you in them. The throa! be more versatilethan the finest flattops. bark ofthe old Gibson -.htop w"s p.r'_ "Ifyou're really brave,"a guitarist .ru-.d fect for a standard like ,,S#eet Sue.,, told him, .you'llput the Olive But nothing could match Thompson's *hr 9?m Dranch rn a room with a D'Aneelico and flattop on a Civil War ballad like ,,So1_ recordthem both." So parkerwint a step diers Joy'-its ringing sustain seemed further. He invited the best players h'e to suspendyou in the air. parkels zui_ knew.to bring their favorite guiturc to tar was like a hybrid of the two. It"was G{h r studio, for a daylongpl{,off the loudestguitar in the room, despite By the time Umanou u"a i arrived. being the lightest, and its solo lir,., ong an impromptu trio had formed. Theiazz out more clearly than any others. DeI virfuoso Charlie Hunter was playing a pending on where itwas picked, close to blond D'Angelico from D+O;ioe SeIy, the fingerboardor downby the bridse. of the Klezmer Mountain noyr, *u, o'n it could play chiming chords,p.r.rir_ his 1947 Gibson L-5; and John Hart, a r1u. rlIhT.r, or quick_footed arpeg_ rtd:Tr: for iazz greats like Clark Terry gios. "It's like an endlessprocession andJackMcDuff, wasplayingrhlthm on of Bu,1!1 Berkeley girls, disguised as the Olive Branch. Um",ror, f,ad b.orrght notes, Umanov said.It was an instru_ a stunning

Tastier chocolate, than longer_lasting than bouquet a offlowers, and guaranteed justher tobe srze.

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mentthat neve....-.J ro loseits voice, thai played .".;t-;; do*., th. ""J guirarin agreement itse* with "..r.-u an..fi,".4 i;;.ilffi1he players stool aroundln Gutts-ki;h..r, ..ti'g *irrlnrrr They tord stord .gg sarad. .i.r lu*t Duk'hilingt""'.;a Django R.i'hurJi, dr. jd-'""ffi;by (Brue) grand, giil Mor,rollr,r'g i.rro rur i^, "ro,rt (,,Dangl bager This is the worst

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ao,',pot_ mentscameour of cases, evolution- ish an it afterevery p;;;;. r pray the ' arylineup seemed form: flattopson fucking ro thing.,,' oneend,bully asNeanderthars; ,t.htop, B.{r.e hl g^u. up his workshopon in the middle,thinner and_more finiy Long Island ?" nJ'ri"."ti.., purk., sculpted; thentheolive Branch. and Like ,riJ,'n. broughthislastguitarto Jimmy oI: it wighed abouthdf asmuchas ocq,ri.to, aJe had the?rst.DAquisto *t guitars the thatcame before it-three and looked ir fb; ;loii'ir-..'u. rurned a halfpounds-but its refinements "t were ii i" hi, h;;?;,-oir*.tting ut moreseamless, "r"""a subcutaneous. neck its ingenuities-the The adjustable tailpiece, hidathinlayerofcarbonbeneatravenee-rr. u'ry--.rrical top, the unorthodox wood;sodid thepickguard br*i.,g_tr,.n gave backto parker.,A it :llX:1 andinner5:l lining' The post'barely ui"sibt., ,rr. ao.rn , existfor this guitar,,, he tord thatpropped theneckwas up made a hi-. 'c;;.;;;#ilb. of invented composite covered soldleaf Therewas for it.,", in y;";;;;;i;ker said, flashy aboutit, yerir madeeven h. ,titt.Thirry sure wasn,t i"t:g whetherhe should theDAquistolookoutdated h"*'f.f, .rr.o*ug.J'or'ior.*"rn.a. Evolutioncanbeoverrated. beauti- DAqui.to', A urrr.".i .n* rrt .ry, *oura fi.rl sound a beautifirl is ,.Both.,, sound, whetherit n*i..n I
THE NEV YORKER, MAY 14,2OO7

-;;t";;riiri or*o.a. stands, arm's an reach from btildi'g ;iao"t have rove a I rack of preamplifiers. more instrul p.t As " "fia;#; #?l'jt Torr,rh.;J,;;;i.:i

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