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Looper's Delight
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A number of people who subscribe to this list have contacted me during the last couple of years about putting a Sustainiac Stealth Plus system into their Parker Fly. Until very recently, I have had to respond that this has not been possible (although it has worked fine in Niteflys). The main problem is that Fly pickups are a special low-profile design that is not used by any other manufacturer. Our Sustainiac magnetic driver transducers are standard humbucker/single coil profile. Also, Parker electronics cavities tend to be jam-packed. We asked for volunteers to send a Fly and let us evaluate it, but we had no takers.
Finally, a brave Fly owner recently sent us his guitar and said "Do whatever it takes"!
Here is what we had to do to make everything fit:
1. We had to build a special base to hold the driver. Also, we had to rebuild our coil bobbins by hand in order to shorten them. This requires that we custom-wind each bobbin. Then, the drivers are simply glued (with silicone adhesive) to the neck pickup cavity.
2. Some slight routing of the electronics cavity is necessary (located underneath the large plastic cover on the back) in order to make room for the Sustainiac circuit board. About a half inch is added to the cavity adjacent to the tremolo spring cavity. This is not visible externally, and doesn't appear to affect the body strength in any way.
3. Replacement of the existing output jack with a special 9-pin jack, so that the guitar battery and also the Sustainiac battery can be disconnected whenever the plug is not inserted into the jack. A jack plate must be added to the body, and the existing jack hole enlarged to accept the 9-pin.
4. Placement of the Sustainiac battery is on top of the tremolo spring, underneath the electronics cover. It fits very well there.
If any of you Fly owners decide to take the plunge, we recommend that you have us do the installation. There is an extra charge of $75 to do this, over and above our normal $100 installation fee.
The end result is that the Sustainiac Stealth Plus works great in the Fly. You can email me for more info if any of you Fly owners are still interested.
BTW: The Fly we did had a Fishman piezo system in it which took up most of the room inside the existing electronics cavity. It also had an externally-mounted GK-2a pickup/electronics system. If you have a Fly with internal GK-2a electronics, we will have to take a look at it to see how/if the Sustainiac will fit.
Alan Hoover
Maniac Music