Unusual Guitar is Music to Man's Ears - and Hands
January 30, 2005
BLOOMINGTON Joe Galvin is thrilled to own a Charlie Hunter eight-string guitar - the only one of its kind in the area. Photo by Nicole Kauffman Latin congas, a Cuban bata, steel pans from Trinidad, a Middle Eastern doumbek and an Indian tabla all stand in a corner of Joe Galvin's Bloomington home. Galvin earned his undergraduate degree from Indiana University in "Performance of Percussion Instruments from Diverse Cultures" - an individualized major program the 22-year-old simply calls "ethnic percussion." He is pursuing a graduate degree in world percussion. Adding to his collection of unusual instruments, he recently became the first - and, so far, only - person in Bloomington to own a Charlie Hunter eight-string guitar. Galvin, an Indianapolis native, is an associate instructor in the IU School of Music, leads a 20-person steel-pan ensemble and teaches private guitar lessons. He has played violin and piano, but his interest in guitar started when he was about 13, studing flamenco and Spanish guitar as an adult, as well as the sitar. While looking for a guitar with more strings than the usual six, Galvin researched the model named for jazz guitarist Charlie Hunter, who helped design it with Novax Guitars owner Ralph Novak. Its price starts at about $3,300 because each Hunter guitar is custom-made by the small San Leandro, Calif., company, and tailored to individual customers. Galvin's is a smooth, coffee-brown mahogany. The instrument is unusual because its frets are fanned, he said. "It's interesting because with a lot of guitars, there's a problem with tuning because of even frets," Galvin said. The fanned frets also are easier to play, once the guitarist gets used to it, said Bill Carrico, Novax Guitars general manager. And the extra strings on the Hunter really make it more like two instruments - a guitar and a bass - that the musician can play as one. "The top five (strings) are standard, and the bottom three are the bottom three of a standard bass," Galvin said. Novax Guitars started making the model specifically for Charlie Hunter about 10 years ago. Since its debut, "hundreds" have been sold, Carrico said, not wanting to be more specific. "They still get bought and sold on the Internet," he added. "People are always on the prowl for a cheaper Charlie Hunter." But the guitar's relative rarity means trial and error is how Galvin and its other owners must learn to play it. No method books have been written for it yet, although Carrico said he has put friendly pressure on Hunter to do one. The musician has a DVD out, "Right Now Live," which often features the guitar, but the demand for a method book would be comparable to the number of Hunter guitars in customers' hands, so the project wouldn't be worthwhile. Galvin points out that while he paid a lot of money for it, it was cheaper than buying both a new guitar and a new bass. Meanwhile, Novak is in the throes of designing another guitar for Charlie Hunter - an eight-string with single-coil pickups instead of the double-coil pickups favored by jazz artists, Carrico said.