Hugely respected luthier Ken Parker has passed away aged 73, less than a week after launching a crowdfunding campaign to assist with his mounting medical bills.
The man behind the innovative Parker Fly guitar, an instrument that former King Crimson maverick Adrian Belew says he plays better on, was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer in 2023.
He’d been battling the “nasty” disease ever since, with the cancer slowly eroding his body. That subsequently forced his retirement from guitar building, although he had been teaching his colleague, Sam Krimmel, to fill his shoes.
Parker launched a GoFundMe page on September 29, calling on the guitar community and those touched by his inventive craftsmanship to help cover his growing medical expenses.
“In early 2023, I was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer that has slowly been debilitating me,” he wrote on the page. “It hasn’t been easy living with this nasty disease, having chemo treatments that zapped my energy and slowly took away my ability to earn a living.
“Now, I’m on a breathing machine 24/7, and I’ve started to lose the use of my left arm. I humbly ask for your support to reduce the medical and personal debt that I’ve incurred and to help with my family’s expenses.”
The luthier passed away peacefully at his home in Gloucester, MA, on October 5, 2025, with Susan Kolwicz by his side. His family is keeping the GoFundMe page active in his honor, with contributions helping to cover the medical expenses accrued.
Born in Long Island, 1952, Parker was just 13 years old when he crafted his first guitar out of a combination of cardboard and wood. He would dedicate his entire life to the art form of building electric guitars, regularly pushing the envelope with his builds.
His flagship Parker Fly, built from lightweight woods and reinforced with a carbon fiber exoskeleton, solves many issues he perceived with traditional builds.
“Wooden guitars tend to deform. The wood is loaded with a tensile force of all the strings, and that's quite a lot of force for a little piece of wood to sustain year after year,” Parker told D'Addario last year. “So this is where composite material comes in, and I added it to wood as an ingredient to help the wood withstand the continual load that it sees as a result of having a set of guitar strings tuned up to pitch.
“We wanted to deliver a high-quality product that didn't need repair and would hang in there and serve the musician as a dependable piece of gear. So, just like a cicada or a lobster, all the strength of the structure is right at the outside surface.”
The Parker Fly grew even more ingenious once Belew, wanting a versatile instrument for King Crimson's live shows, turned to Parker for a signature model.
His futuristic axe features a DiMarzio bridge humbucker, a Sustainiac in the neck, and a Piezo pickup for acoustic guitar emulations. The inclusion of a Line 6 Variax unlocks 25 different guitars, ranging from Stratocasters and Telecasters to Dobros and sitars, much to the delight of Belew’s musical oddisms.
Speaking to Sweetwater about that exoskeleton, Belew marvelled at the benefits it provided.
“It's some remarkable sci-fi material, and it makes the wood 10,000 times stronger,” he said. “You could stand on this neck and it's not gonna hurt it. It'll never go out of tune or need to be intonated.”
Adding to his praise in conversation with Premier Guitar last year, Belew felt Parker's builds went above and beyond the classics.
“I felt like Ken Parker had taken 20 years to eliminate all the things that normally happen with electric guitars,” he beamed. “All the problems you have, the tuning, the neck, the frets wearing out; everything that normally can go wrong with a Fender or Gibson. He figured it all out.
“I swear this guitar never goes out of tune. Plays beautifully. I play better with the [signature] Parker Fly. I can't explain it better than that.”
Parker was also an early adopter of stainless steel frets, something commonplace in today's market. Moreover, the carbon fiber exoskeleton, which helped solve tuning and intonation issues, is similar to the material Aristides uses for its guitars today, once again proving how ahead of the curve Parker was.
“Ken Parker, gentleman visionary. I cannot thank you enough for your incredible Parker Fly design,” Belew wrote on Instagram after hearing of Parker’s passing. “Your genius changed my life. Thank you.”
Readers can visit his GoFundMe page for more.
