Ken Parker Archtoppery: Series Introduction

[Music] my name is ken parker and i've been obsessed with arch top guitars for 45 years i started building guitars in the early 70s i was friends with jimmy decristo and knew a lot of great players people that were very invested in the artstop guitar and i really became a big fan of the form i think a properly constructed architect guitar can be thought of as the most versatile of all guitars its tonal capacities and power are capable of serving almost any kind of style of guitar playing [Music] do the issue with the guitar is that we only have our fingers or a pick to use to generate the sound we have no bow the way the violin family has so the guitar has to be an efficient structure which means in my thinking it needs to be a light structure that's very responsive and very resonant and starts easily with a very low uh input so to that goal i try to make the guitar as light as i can consistent with it not falling apart [Music] do [Music] the bridge takes the information from the strings the energy from the strings and gives it to the top so the bridge is a very very important part of the sound path of the instrument [Music] i like the bridge to be fairly large so that it can address and drive a big part of the top and i also like it to be very light so i hollow out the bottom of the bridge it's very very lightweight almost like a [Music] [Applause] tint [Music] do [Music] i believe that the neck should be reflective and stiff and it's hard to get it reflective and stiff enough just using wood so in my necks i have used carbon fiber and high strength epoxy resin to reinforce the wood so the neck is mostly wood but it has quite a lot of carbon fibers in it the making the neck this way with a veneer on the outside and center of the neck is a core of soft wood vertical grain douglas fir and a lot of carbon in between the veneer and the net core it provides quite a number of advantages one of them there's no heel to the guitar so that when the player is using the guitar by the time they run out of a place to put their hand they can really access almost the whole fingerboard [Music] easily [Music] do [Music] nice guitar with nick all right get in there huh [Music] in the early 70s as i first built guitars on my own it became clear that i needed both instruction and better tools i reached out to some friendly violin makers who welcomed my questions and showed off a whole series of special tools each one of them was designed and perfected to do one specific step in the violin making process they seemed like magical objects to me all at once i knew that i had to study the craft of tool making and off i went to get my training becoming a tool maker opened so many doors in my work life giving me the ability to manipulate wood metals and plastics in new ways with more control and better precision i felt free to improvise and took on lots of fun projects from interesting musicians a harp with a vibrato bar a drum an electric cello a violin with two necks crazy double drumsticks but my first and my true love is the acoustic arch top guitar the acoustic arch top has gotten a bad rap but i believe it's an untapped design this time has yet to come i'm still fascinated by the challenge of combining wood and a few extra ingredients to make an exceptional tool for musicians in this series i'll show you how i create an instrument and try to explain the thinking and the discoveries that have led me to my current designs i'll explore my methods in detail and will try to answer your questions along the way i confess that i'm concerned that some of the traditional methods of work that have been so important to me are endangered i hope to show how something complex and demanding is created by the performance of many simple steps and how the accomplishment of craftsmanship is its own reward [Music] welcome to my workshop

Channel: Ken Parker Archtoppery

Views: 54,771

Keywords: Ken Parker, Ken Parker Archtops, Parker Guitars, Archtop Guitars, Archtop, guitar building, archtop building, archtop guitar building, guitar wood bending, archtop wood bending, guitar sides wood bending, guitar bending sides, bending sides, guitar pickguard, guitar making the pickguard, archtop making the pickguard, pickguard, pick guard, archtop pickguard, archtop pickup, guitar pickup, acoustic archtop, archtop fitting the sides, guitar finish, guitar bridge

Id: snzCzLhr4vg

Length: 10min 16sec (616 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 17 2021