I worked with Froc -- in the shop and on the bandstand -- at the time that Swallow came by. Coupla points:
a) Froc and George Furlanetto were great pals and had, essentially, a long-distance collaboration. George was a superior woodworker; Froc was the wild idea-man. Good ideas, too. For example, Froc was building humbuckers using one coil with loaded-slugs and one with bottom-magnets, like on the original PRS guitars, before Paul Smith was. Wigged the crap out of Smith when he first met him, too: Smith was worried that Froc was gonna invade his business model. As if.
b) The first Swallow body was a more-or-less fender-shaped thang, maple back mostly hollowed out with a router & spruce top. Back in 1982 that was a REMARKABLY novel idea. Nowadays, of course, this is quite commonplace.
c) Froc was, shall we say, an idiosyncratic business-operator. In other words, fame and money were not really on his radar screen (and still aren't). The first Swallow body sat around the shop for months, collecting dust. I picked it up one day and said, 'Hey fellas, what do we have to do with this thing?' At that point, Froc realized that he could buy more food if he finished it up, so he did, using magnetic pickups. At that point Swallow started talking to Froc about the piezo idea. It's no surprise to hear that the eventual product was neck-through, because that was another critical part of the Fillipetti/Furlanetto concept.
d) I got to hear Swallow in relatively intimate settings a few times at that point. Among other things, he swings like a monster. He can walk -- on a plank, with a pick -- like a mother****er. And of course, he does all those other things so well, too . . .
, a bit too thin for my taste..
