About once every decade, a guitar comes along that manages to incorporate enough innovations in technology and design to warrant a place among the all-time classics. The Parker P30 is in the class, a refreshing alternative to the many bolt-necked, single-coil guitars on the market.
The P30 features the instantly recognizable Parker body and headstock silhouette. The body is simplified, its lens-like convex curve puts plenty of wood in the tone-sensitive center of the instrument while presenting a thinner edge to wrap your arm around. Immaculate and perfectly constructed, the P30 uses relatively conventional materials and construction approaches. Gone are the glued-on stainless steel fretwire and the “M&M shell” neck and fretboard construction. Down at the bridge, the tremolo system is a traditional fulcrum design.
Like the USA-made Parker NiteFly guitars, the P30 features a true bolt-on neck with a half-round precision joint. “This design ensures optimum resonance from the body and neck tone woods,” Parker’s John Page explains. “It also resists the warping that may occur on guitars with a traditional square neck joint.” Along with the medium jumbo frets, the slightly chunky contour gives the maple neck a firm feel; it’s extremely friendly when exploring the upper frets and—most importantly— solid as a rock, even when we tried to nudge it from side to side in the pocket. Although the maple is somewhat plain-grained, the satin finish is babybottom smooth, and the conical form of the fretboard (10" at the nut, 13" at the 22nd fret) feels great for both low-position chord grips and stratospheric finger frenzies. It’s a pleasant change from the slinky neck silhouette of most single-coil guitars and, in spite of the added mass, the neck-body balance proved superb. The minimal headstock is angled, both for better string seating in the graphite nut and for better tone, and the low mass up top helps to keep string energy focused in the neck and body. At about 7-1/2 lbs., the P30 feels reassuringly substantial without digging into your shoulder, and we loved the thick-tothin contour of the poplar body’s edges. Quality hardware, attentively mounted, guarantees no spurious rattles, and the fretwork and setup on our reviewed model (strung with .009–.042 strings) was excellent.
This is no cheaped-down LiteFly. The combination of poplar body and maple neck gives the P30 a crisp, clear sound that generates tight bass notes, complex mids, and a glassy treble. We plugged it into a variety of amps, both clean and overdriven, and found the single-coil Parker Stinger pickups fully capable of providing the classic tone associated with this design. With a single Alnico magnet mounted behind the pole pieces, there’s a bit less chime and glassine transparency than you’d get from a sixmagnet pickup, but this proved a blessing in disguise when adding gain to the output. Whether we increased the overdrive with an amp’s gain circuit or a distortion pedal, the P30 delivered more heft and warmth than a more traditional vintage pickup would. And the Alnico magnet retained more detail and a wider frequency response than the ceramic magnets that are often used in budget single-coil pickups.
Parker puts enough spin on the triple-pickup paradigm to ensure that this ain’t no cookie-cutter guitar. Truly a max-bang-per-buck instrument, the P30 announces with both its looks and its playability that you, like Ken Parker himself, are ready, willing, and able to play outside the box.
- Poplar body and bolt-on Maple neck
- 3 Parker Stinger single coil pickups
- Fulcrum style vibrato bridge.
- 5-way mag pickup selection
- 1 volume, 2 tone controls
- Grover 18:1 tuners
- 7.72 lbs
