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The Telecaster inspiration is immediately apparent

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It would be reasonable to say that the enduring success of the Parker Fly, a revolutionary electric introduced in 1992 that sat fairly and squarely in the ‘space age’ category, will have taken some of the industry by surprise. How could such a thin, lightweight and crazy-looking thing ever capture the hearts and minds of a generation bowled over by the release of Nirvana’s Nevermind opus mere months previously?

Part of the answer must be that guitarists are always after something new and different, and it was the Fly’s diverse nature that caught the attention, certainly visually. Of course, once players actually had a chance to try out a Fly, the sheer quality of the construction, the performance and the tonal aspects, for the most part, sealed the deal there and then.

Parker Guitars has continued to both expand and refine its range over the years, with models like the bolt-on NiteFly, the MIDI Fly, a number of acoustic options and, more recently, the Fly Bass. And what remained constant, alongside the quality, were the wallet-incinerating asking prices.

Even before handing the reins over to US Music Corp, the home of Washburn, Parker had tried producing lower spec’d, and therefore more affordable, offshore guitars - the now deleted P-38 and P-44 spring to mind - but the P-Series arguably represents the biggest stride the company has taken from the tried and trusted track. For a start, the single-cut P-10 and P-20 have a body shape that’s the first new design bearing the Parker legend in 11 years...

P-36

You can have a squint at the P-10 and P-20 on the official Parker website, but we’ve opted to look more closely at what has to be the most controversial and unusual guitar Parker has ever produced - which is certainly saying something. Any hullabaloo surrounding the P-36 is almost solely down to its obvious influence, and you can tick off the Telecaster-influenced features immediately: pickup type and design, bridge and control plate, scratchplate and even the body material all echo Leo Fender's 1952 masterpiece.

Even though the P-36’s body is made from two hefty slabs of select ash in the classic fashion, the guitar still only weighs in at 7lbs. This is down to the familiar degree of Parker bodyshaping, which sees the thickness decrease quite substantially from the body’s lower edge to the upper – from a thickness of 41mm to just under 21mm, in fact. What’s not in question is the actual grade of wood. Judging by the degree of figuring, it is very high indeed: the rear of the body is especially striking.

One of the ways companies can keep RRPs down is to provide their own electrics, and here Parker has forgone custom-wound DiMarzio units in favour of its own Alnico single coils. Of course, no apology is either made or expected for the look of the units employed here, and they are controlled by volume and tone pots, along with a traditional three-way lever.