As a young man, he performed in bands in Nelson and Wellington before migrating off-stage and into work as a producer on both sides of the Tasman, signing, producing or working with Kiwi acts of the 70s and early 80s, including Mark Williams, Anna Leah, Annie Whittle, Craig Scott, Mi-sex, Dragon and Herbs.
Galbraith loathed the industry as a producer and abandoned all things musical for a year, spending it on a Queensland beach.
After returning to New Zealand, he switched gears to become an advertising writer and worked the adopted career until semi-retirement a couple of years ago.
"But all the way through I had an absolute abiding love of guitars."
He returned to hand-made guitars after stumbling across an Outback artisan hawking cigar-box guitars in a Noosa market about a year ago.
The cigar-box guitar was spawned among poor families and blues and folk musicians in the American south, originally featuring a cigar box as a resonator, a broomstick or wooden slat as a neck, and one or two strings.
"I was looking at spending a fortune on lessons to build real guitars when I saw my first cigar-box guitar that day. After I played one, I thought 'wow, I could make these myself'."
This year, Galbraith started building his own cigar-box guitars and has so far made about seven, including bass models and an amplifier, under his Fox Box Guitars brand.
Galbraith is a self-titled "luthi-ette" who fashions his scaled and correctly intonated guitars using everything from plywood, potlids and cannibalised parts of other guitars -- American maple necks, premier quality strings, and rosewood fretboards.
"Some guys do it with cars or motorcycles or women but, for me, guitars just took my breath away."
Fox Box Guitars are available through the Industrial by Design gallery in Main St, Greytown, or email alangalbraith@me.com
