I first met Ken Parker at the 2006 Newport Guitar Festival. He had a few prototypes out on his table. I didn’t know what he looked like so I was just checking out the design features. But then I noticed his trademark minimalist six-in-line headstock. I looked up and said, “Holy crap, you’re Ken Parker!” and he said, “Well, yeah.” We chatted about the usual lutherie stuff, particularly the use of epoxy graphite which I was also into.

Maybe a year later, he called me to ask where I was getting my graphite cloth (TAP Plastics, walking distance from my Portland, Oregon, shop). I was quite flattered that he would ask my opinion on anything.

I can’t say we stayed in touch at the time. He was on his archtop trajectory and I was still making flattops. But all that changed in 2019 when the GAL asked me to review the latest edition of Paul Schmidt’s book, Acquired of the Angels. I felt I should get my hands on a few D’Angelicos and D’Aquistos for background, and most of them were on the East Coast. So I planned a trip to several guitar stores that I knew had D’As. That seemed a great opportunity to catch up with Ken, too. By then I had built a few archtops and was curious about his now fully developed, very innovative design.

I had my itinerary set and was about to book my flights, when COVID shut everything down.

But I had reconnected with Ken, and we had some long discussions over the phone. I also watched some of his lectures online, in particular the one about Gibson history and the aborted development of the acoustic archtop guitar because of the advent of amplification. Radical stuff, but he made a lot of sense.

So the first thing I did under COVID lockdown was to build an acoustic archtop using some of Ken’s principles, mostly the plate thicknesses and upper-bass-bout soundhole. The instrument was a great success, far and away the best sounding acoustic archtop I’d made. By this time I had retired from professional lutherie, so I could build anything I wanted. Over the next couple of years I built two more of the same design, and another two in the more traditional f-hole style.

And then the pandemic lockdown ended. I had written my review of Acquired of the Angels (AL#143), and now Tim Olsen suggested I interview Ken. My trip back east finally happened in 2022, two years after I’d planned.

I spent two days with Ken, and he was kind enough to put me up for the night. He was an open book about his work, giving me as much detail as I could absorb. I brought that first Parker-inspired archtop with me and he was very complimentary and encouraging. I was frankly a bit overwhelmed, but his friendly manner kept me at ease.

But nothing could have prepared me for the breadth and depth of his knowledge and skills. Woodworking was just the beginning. He was equally adept in metalworking, having trained as a machinist. Probably the most impressive example of this was his purfling channel cutter, a mill attachment consisting of two eccentrically mounted bearings, which kept the cutter a consistent perpendicular distance from the edge, coincident with the inner edge of the linings inside. This was a critical feature of his guitars, and one that would be very difficult to accomplish without that attachment. He also ground the single-flute end mills for it. He said that as he cut the purfling channels, he would repeat the mantra, “Perfect.” He said he “hadn’t lost a man yet.”

This was but one example of the way he rethought every aspect of guitar making. He made most of the hand planes he used, including a round bronze plane he’d just designed and completed. He shaped and sharpened his gouges differently. He joined his plates with a piece of paper in the seam, so he could rough carve and then separate the seam and re-plane it to account for internal tensions being released. His necks were a spruce core wrapped in many layers of epoxy graphite with a decorative veneer on the outside, all assembled in a heated mold that formed the graphite post as an integral part.

In many ways he was a very traditional wood- and metalworker, with finely honed hand skills. But he was no slave to tradition, using power tools and even CNC when it made sense and would make a better guitar. Always, if it would make a better guitar. (Mike’s “Meet the Maker” with Ken appears in AL#149, and Ken’s personal take on the genesis of the archtop guitar is available to members in our Articles Online.)

As a person, Ken was friendly and gregarious, with a quick wit. His crackling intelligence was always on display. Much of what he had to say was controversial, but never for controversy’s sake. He approached all subjects with great intellectual integrity. He had strongly held opinions, all well considered. He didn’t suffer fools gladly; he didn’t have time for that. But on balance he was very kind and well meaning.

At the end of my visit I told him the visit was more than I’d even dared hope for. That earned me a hug.