Ken Parker's Olive Branch

Craig Bumgarner

Not GJ, but very interesting. Ken Parker's Olive Branch archtop looks and sounds like a substantial innovation in acoustic guitar.

http://www.kenparkerarchtops.com/

What led me to this is the excellent article in the May 14th New Yorker. I haven't found the full text on line anywhere, but here is a lead in...

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007 ... act_bilger

There are many parallels in the article and Ken Parker's thinking to Selmac construction, in particular the efforts to create lighter instruments. The Olive Branch weighs 3-1/2 lbs, half what a classic archtop might weigh and 3/4 lb less than my Dupont. VERY thin tops, koa veneered carbon fiber neck, etc.

There are great sound clips on the website. #8 Stella by Starlight by John Hart gives a hint how GJ would sound in the second uptempo part. It would be interesting to hear someone with a good gypsy right hand play it.

Oh, did I mention they are $30K and the wait, well, maybe a long time.

Craig Bumgarner.

Heretic

It's time for Mr. Parker to have a reality check.
This reminds me of the old saying, "There's fishing equipment designed to catch fish. And there's fishing equipment designed to catch fishermen".

Craig Bumgarner

Heretic wrote:

It's time for Mr. Parker to have a reality check.
This reminds me of the old saying, "There's fishing equipment designed to catch fish. And there's fishing equipment designed to catch fishermen".

I suppose you are referring to the price. From the New Yorker article, it sounds like Mr. Parker more time than you might suppose thinking about the "realities" of the guitar making business. He has designed guitars and headed production facilities. He has now decisively chosen to leave that behind and innovate instead of mass produce.

The cost of such innovation is high. If he is able to produce an instrument at the very highest end of the spectrum, with a uniquely inspiring sound, it might very well be worth $30K. As the New Yorker article points out, new high end violins and classical guitars go for more than this, sometimes a lot more.

As an amateur, a $30K for a guitar is out of the question for me, but for a pro, well, it doesn't seem that much if it is really that good, and from the New Yorker article, it might really be that good. I mean, there are probably a lot of us that drive a car that cost $30K or more new and we don't think too much of that. We justify it because we need to get to work on time, we need comfortable, reliable transportation etc. For a pro, the logic might be the same. I know a young professional cellist who bought a 275 year old cello (it has it's own name) for $75K. I have been in a medium size room when she played and it has a huge voice like you wouldn't believe. It is immense, glass shattering, like no cello I have ever heard. She sees it as the same kind of investment a business man makes in his physical plant, office, equipment. She has a mortgage on it just like any other business investment. Keep in mind the value of a great instrument goes up over time (unlike the value of my car). If Ken Parker's guitar is that good and he can get $30K, I say more power to him.

The point of my post was to bring attention to what I thought was some startling innovations. This guitar is extremely light, very well balanced, beautifully made, has a fully adjustable neck which allows the fingerboard to raised and lowered under the strings without changing the bridge break angle unintentionally, a tailpiece that can be height adjusted to vary the bridge break angle intentionally, and more.

This guitar is about ideas, not buying trinkets. Though I doubt I will ever own one, I still find these ideas stunning.

Craig

Bob Holo

True that he's asking a ton - it'll be interesting to see if he gets it.

But, price tag or not - he's doing a lot of things very well. Many of these design areas are ones in which I am intensely interested and I am finding that past and present masters have dabbled in these concepts and/or made their fame around one or more of them.

Thin bodies project well - a common mis perception is that you have to have a deep body. (Favino / Greven)

Thin tops are responsive and have plenty of "meat" to the tone if well arched & braced. (Dupont / Klepper / Larsen)

The center of the radiating surface is not a very good place to put the soundhole from either a structural or acoustic standpoint. (Andersen, Klein, Elkayam)

Stiff well dampened necks are wonderful. (Traugott, Doolin, lotsa great luthiers actually... using many different techniques)

action adjustment should take place both at the bridge and at the neck joint as the two are inter-related. (Doolin, Mayes - again, many...)

Trussrods don't actually solve the problem they portend to - they simply move the problem to a different place on the fingerboard. (Elliott, acutally - most of the great classical builders of the last century)

Elliot

To my ears there have got to be 100 guitars right here that blow it away:

http://www.zavaletas-guitarras.com/files/gallery.htm

None over $17k, most under $10k. And we're talking about guitars with long provenance and proven reputation, even Hausers.

a

i've heard gitane's that blow that thing away..
no offense, but the archtop design has more to do with bowed instruments than plucked ones. throw a stimer on a selmac and you've got one of the best playing, smoothest sounding plugged in sounds out there... and you don't have turn the treble down to emphasize the fundamental pitch.

badjazz

from that recording, it doesn't sound that great to me. maybe in person it sounds great, but you can't tell me that it sounds $24,000-26,000 better than a vintage archtop or a top quality GJ guitar. I read that new yorker article, and it sounded like he wasn't even trying to justify the price except that classical stringed instruments are really expensive. Apples and oranges, if you ask me. The environment in which most pro guitar players work is very different from playing in an orchestra. It sounds like an interesting bunch of ideas, but much like the fly guitar it looks kind of ugly and seems overpriced.

The fishing equipment analogy seems especially apt.

Jack

I haven't bothered to listen to the recordings, because I don't really think it's going to make much of a difference through my computer speakers, but I do wonder about the price regardless. Is there a mention of how many of these he plans to produce? If it's one or two a year, then I can understand, but even then I find it hard to believe they'll gain a following. I suppose that's not the issue; but still, I agree with the idea that the archtop guitar market is very different from the classical guitar market (or violin, cello, etc.)

Beyond that, I wonder just how innovative the guitar is-Bob mentions many features already explored by other luthiers, but I doubt those instruments are selling new at that kind of price. Granted, Parker seems to incorporated just about all the innovations into his model, but still...am I missing something, or does it seem like it's almost a Selmac with the addition of the adjustable string height?

I don't quite get the comment about throwing a Stimer on a Selmac; that's a totally different sound. Great, to my ears, but I don't get the relation to the other guitar...finally, I'd like to add my 2 cents about the 'Fly' looks-that headstock is plain ugly. Let it go, Ken!

Best,
Jack.

scot

There have been scores of "innovations" for guitar over the years - the "vivi-tone", cylinder backs, double backs, internal soundboxes, asymmetry, mixed woods on the soundboards, lattice bracing, stressed tops - and most of these innovations are on the scrap heap. Even so, there are still many innovators building guitars, they always cost a fortune and whether or not they are any better than traditional designs is still questionable.

The most infamous recent innovation is the Kasha/Schneider top. It sounded pretty good as made by luthiers who embraced it, so Gibson invested a lot of money to mass produce them. These Mark guitars, as they were called, were priced right and sounded and played just fine, but they were universally rejected by the guitar playing public. The theory of the Kasha top is sound, and it works equally well with nylon or steel string construction. But in a blind test done 10 or 15 years ago, the Kasha-topped guitars scored about average among several dozen luthier-built classical guitars. Good, yes, arend different, but not better - like most innovations.

Guitarists are a conservative lot. Because few of us are wealthy, when we're buying an expensive guitar, we usually try to find what we know will work for the long term. We won't usually opt for an innovation unless we're certain of it's merit - and the nature of innovation usually rules that out. For example, consider how suspicious people around here are of Bernard Lehmann's X-braced Selmer style guitars - even though these guitars have an excellent sound.

Ken Parker appears to be an able builder with good ideas. He's made his fortune and can afford to build what he wants to build and can charge what he thinks his efforts are worth. But his last project did not sell as well as he'd hoped - that would tell me something. History is against it, but who knows, maybe this time some of his ideas will work well enough to stand. There are always wealthy players like Scott Chinery who'll bankroll the luthiers who build fancy and/or innovatative guitars, and I'm glad these guys are around. Chinery's Blue Guitar project produced a lot of beautiful and great-sounding and (slightly) innovative guitars.

Bon chance, Mr Parker.

My 2 cents.

Bob Holo

Scot,

I'm glad you mentioned Bernie Lehmann's guitars in a complimentary way. I also thought they sounded pretty darned good and was a bit puzzled by the cold reception he got at DFNW for the two years he attended. The discussions I heard at jams were basically focused on whether or not he was using the "right" bracing pattern instead of how the guitars actually sounded & played.

Unfortunately, this discussion has made me realize how much of a hypocrite I am... I'm not a big fan of Benedetto archtops - and in all honesty it's primarily because they depart from the traditional style and I've spent way too much money on 'traditional' archtops to be open and accepting to new designs... (though my bro has one and it's a good box) I probably owe Mark an apology as we had a discussion about the 'right' way to brace an archtop some time back

Josh Hegg

I didn't read all the posts... so forgive me if this seems like a repost of an earlier poster.....


It sounds great. but not for 30K. I looks great. But not for 30K. If I was supper rich and 30k was like $300 to me.. would I buy one? Yes.


Cheers,
Josh