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anyone thats ever asked about lefty guitars or were curious about the other 10 percent of us.


evol04gt

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i am a lefty an here is my response to anyone thats ever asked this age old -- why dont lefties relearn?

 

 

 

i get asked everyday the stupid age old question "if you had to pay more for all of your guitars, why didnt you LEARN right handed?

 

BECAUSE THIS FELT NATURAL TO ME. i was forced to write with my right hand in kindergarten or i would be a 100% lefty... there are somethings i do backwards from conventional lefty and righty roles... i also have 2 friends that are lefties but playing guitar to them just felt natural holding the guitar right handed....

 

if the only thing every guitar player did was follow the "rules" or held the guitar the same way, music wouldnt come as much from the grove or soul in our bodies....

 

do we all hold our guitars at the same height? i change my stap height constantly when im playing just depending on how i feel or how it feels at that moment. wedsensday i was asked by a righty thats a violin player that had never given it a thought about righty or lefty (because she is in the 95th percentile of course and lefties dont really exist) why they call the strumming hand the dominate hand because truthfully the fretting hand does the work... my first thought was that well thats the rythym... then i caught myself before i said it because both hands have to be in rythym with each other anyways.... i guess its just "how it is" i should just call my self lefthanded strummer, right handed fretter...

 

 

 

and PLEASE RIGHT HANDERS OUT THERE--- stop f*****g asking' "why not just restring the guitar?" well , i dont know, come to myhouse and flip over one of my guitars and ill restring it for you... my 2000 dollar gibson will feel like a 200 dollar msrp priced guitar... the ONLY guitars i have been able to flip are fully semetrical guitars (335 style hollow bodies) but was still left with gaping holes on the bass side of the body, having to get new nuts made and nearly loosing intonation adjustabilities because the saddle posts are NOT square on the guitar- the bass side angles back and the trble strings angle towards the neck... oh and my dean solid quilted maple top back and sides12 string that i had to have a new nut, saddle and fret dressing done which ended up costing me about 225.

 

and yes i know many lefties preffer the bass strings on the bottom (**** dale, baby face) its just how it is... but you dont see **** dale jabbing his arms with knobs and having restricted high note access....

 

 

 

make music for music..do what feels right- follow your heart...... people would have scoffed and hendrix playing bass notes with his thumbs and leads with his digits if he would have come out 10 years before...

 

my only complaint about being a lefty is that my gibsons had a 200=400 dollar upcharge..

my fenders ?(usa and mex) had about 100 upcharge), my epis about 30-85 upcharge. all my others were either about the same or i was able to get discounted to match pricing..... oh and avalibility of many models and colors has been a pain.... try finding a gibson or epiphone explorer thats even close to the price of the righty version... all the special guitars i want have to be either luthier made or knock offs... luckily these days, the only diff with some of the knock offs is the electronics and the resale. (sometime ill be buying and eastwood p90 special and sidejack) there is an australian compnay that makes explorers too...in korina@!!

 

the hendrix strat (the lefty with a righty tremelo and nut made me sick for obvious reasons and that fender wouldnt give jimi a lefty even though they made them(i know clapton bought him one but he was dead before he got to play it) and jimi probably sold more strats for fender than buddy holly did..) and the fact that the kurt cobain inspired/designed jagmaster only having made a fraction in lefty was completely rediculous based on the priciples the designer being a lefty... my rant is over....

 

so next time you talk to a lefty, say--- hey man more power to you!!!!! and slip them some cash because our GAS can only happen on a fraction of the instraments as yours can.

 

 

](*,)O:)

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the best shop i have delt with is LAYS GUITAR in askron ohio he has fixed my les pauls headstock snapping in two places and i cant even tell, and does all of my work for me... he is a gibson repair tech and the original orner Virgil owns SIT strings...dan is the greatest guy and luthier i have ever met.. i is willing to build me anything to exact spec (and better) that i want for a really fair price. they do work for everyone around the word (joe walsh, and a lot of top dollar musicians) and im just a simple 55k a year guy and dan has taken grat care of me since the days i first set foot in his store... i have bever met a business owner that would spend more time with his here and there young guy that comes in for frett dressings and pick up swaps than his clients that probably have billing accounts with.. but anyways.....

 

 

 

yeah when i was younger the days of finding a lefty guitar that was good for under a 1000 were un heard of... these days, its a whole different story... of course 15 years ago most players had 5 very different guitars.... these days we are having 10s 20s or 30s of guitars in our homes...

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At least you can get a left handed guitar. You cannot get a left handed saxophone.

 

But then since the left hand is much busier on the sax than the right one, I wonder if they are all left handed saxophones and that you simply cannot get a right handed one. (With the exception of Bb, I can play from G to C# on the main two octaves on the sax with the left hand only, and no notes with the right hand only)

 

I've often wondered if the "normal" guitar was a left handed instrument for the same reason - but after reading your post - I guess it is not.

 

I once played with a lefty who learned on a right hand guitar. He could flip the RH guitar over in the middle of a song and continue playing as if nothing was different. He played lead a little better left-handed-upside-down than he did right handed, but he was proficient either way. Pretty amazing fellow.

 

My big sister is a lefty, and that made elbows at the dinner table easy - I sat on her right and we didn't fight (at least about elbows).

 

Since the lefties are less than a tenth of the population, it seems that not everybody is going to cater to you. Ours is a profit motivated economy, and the sheer numbers of non-lefties means they are going to get more things built for them (when there is a difference). And when the guitar is built for the lefty, it will usually cost more simply because there are fewer customers paying for the equipment needed to make the guitar.

 

It's a little like using a Mac computer (please - I don't want to start a war, I have Mac and PC computers). Some things are simply not available for the Mac and some things simply cost more for it because there are fewer Macs on the planet.

 

I don't think a lefty should be forced to write with their right hand or play a right handed guitar. Do what feels right for you.

 

Insights and incites by Notes

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right on!! if i could have purchased a mac for the 350 i got my 1000 dollar hp laptop for, i would have a mac... lol

 

 

yeah i forgot about hornplayers..... cheap horns are still ungodly expensive.... granted, a lot goes into them but still!

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r<...>

yeah i forgot about hornplayers..... cheap horns are still ungodly expensive.... granted' date=' a lot goes into them but still![/quote']

 

Thinking about it, I don't know of any horn or woodwind that is made different for left and right handed players.

 

I guess we all just deal with it. So in contrast, guitarists are lucky that the industry caters to them, even if it is at a price.

 

When visiting the UK I rented a car with a stick-shift and decided that all UK cars are built for left handed people ;-)

 

Seriously, in a week I got quite used to it and didn't mind driving on the other side of the street at all.

 

Notes

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hello,fellow lefty here.playing left hand is the bom.nobody but me plays my guitar lol.if i go to a music store very rarly do you get to check out a guitar,alittle frustrating.what if someone told Hendrix tolearn right handed,he may have givin'up fromthe frustration,think about it.the left is the artistic side lol.my baby a epi les paul standard plus lefty"no touchy please".i also have a left handed marshall amp great tones from the other side ha ha!

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yeah i have gotten a good feel for a guitar by the way the righty plays... i can compare model to model better.. like when i compared the epi sg and the faded gibson..... the epi played a lot better to me... and the feel was nicer.... all the set ups with intonation and string hieght and nuts can be adjusted... fretwork and neck feel are easier to jugde for me that way................. now playing a fender style upside down is a chore to compare due to the way everything sits...... gibsons are a lot more classic and semi semtrical..fenders are and have always been a little more art deco feel ...... blah blah blah......

 

 

my epiphone sg should be in the ups facility tonight.... i need to find out if they are open tomorrow so i dont have to wait till monday at 8 pm to play and set up the baby..... i need to get some guage feelers and set it up the way my gibby les paul is.....action on that guitar is to die for!

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When visiting the UK I rented a car with a stick-shift and decided that all UK cars are built for left handed people ;-)

 

Seriously' date=' in a week I got quite used to it and didn't mind driving on the other side of the street at all.

 

Notes

[/quote']

 

I lived in a country that had UK-style "right-hand drive" (that is, the steering column is on the right side of the car, and you drive it on the left side of the road) for several years. You do get used to it quite quickly, even if you are right-handed like I am. In fact, my wife the lefty had no more and no less adjustment than me to the change.

 

Funny, though, how you can go too far. Take Albert King, for instance. He played a right-handed guitar upside down without restringing it (that is, low E at the bottom.) Not hard to see why he favoured Gibson's Flying V design. But, the neat thing is that in his later life he had custom left-handed guitars made, yet he still strung them with the low E on the bottom. He'd been doing it for so long that it was easier to just keep playing upside down rather than learn how to properly play "lefty".

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prospero----- thats exactly what i mean when i said that some preffer bass strings on the bottom... its just how they do it.... there was an article some 10 or 15 years ago about swapping your strings upside down and tuning them to standard (obviously the octaves would be different... it was silly but it did give me some cool litttle tonal riffs..... just something weird to do or try..... wekll folks im outtie---- time to go to work and sell some goods and make some commission been great talking to everyone... this board seems pretty well rounded thanks!

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Steve Miller took the concept to its extreme conclusion some years back when he wanted to emulate Hendrix's sound as a right-handed player. He got a left handed strat, reverse-strung it and played it upside down, so that the vibrato arm, controls and string orientation would all have the same relation to his picking hand as they would to a southpaw playing a righty instrument.

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By sheer luck I learned to play righty (I'm a lefty) only because when I started to play guitar I didn't even know there was such a thing as a left-handed guitar! The first left-hander I ever saw was Paul McCartney on the Ed Sullivan Show & by then I'd been playing 3 years.

 

I am so grateful that things turned out that way. My nephew is a lefty & I've shared his pain when he tries to buy a guitar. Not only does he have to choose from only a small fraction of the models the rest of us have to choose from but he's got to pay more money for them when he does find one. It's a raw deal. There, but for the grace of God, go I.

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I lived in a country that had UK-style "right-hand drive" (that is' date=' the steering column is on the right side of the car, and you drive it on the left side of the road) for several years. You do get used to it quite quickly, even if you are right-handed like I am. <...>[/quote']

 

I worked on cruise ships in the Caribbean for 3 years.

 

The weirdest thing was in the Bahamas and US Virgin Islands they used mostly US cars (steering wheel on the left side) AND they drove on the UK (left) hand side of the road. So while driving, the driver was on the shoulder instead of the middle of the road. I got used to that though.

 

Driving in Grand Cayman prepared me for renting a car in the UK except the shift was on the column and that was much easier than the shift on the floor as it was on the UK rental. Advancing up the gears and crossing the H towards me instead of away from me was the only adjustment I had to make.

 

While in the UK I put 3,000 miles on the car, and only turned into the wrong lane once. Fortunately it was on a deserted road in Scotland and I moved over without causing a problem (no other cars around). I did find the drivers in the UK very courteous, more so than US drivers.

 

Here is another question for the lefties. Do you use the computer mouse in your right or left hand (my sister chooses the left).

 

Insights and incites by Notes

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I'm a lefty- do almost everything left... except play guitar. Though I used to be able to play ambi, I recently had to have some of the bones in my left hand graft and reinforced with screws. After that I just played righty because I lost feeling in my pinky and ring fingers. Still play fine- just have to have to be a bit faster with my first 2 fingers to get stings. And as for the mouse...I solved that problem by using a trackball

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Sometimes I have often thought about picking up a cheap lefty to try and relearn on that side. For me, it is just to do something different and keep the wiring in my brain fresh. My grandfather once told me to never stop learning. [The guy is a sweetheart, a wonderful pianist, and a retired engineer - the kind who taught himself machine language when he wanted to learn about computers... You know, the binary code!]#-o

 

He took language and advanced music theory and improv lessons well into the years when many do nothing but crossword puzzles. And when I see deals like THIS

 

I think maybe it is worth it to keep my mind sharp.

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I'm a rather odd lefty.

 

I write left-handed, tie my shoes left-handed (there is a difference - my uncle had to teach me because neither of my parents could), and eat (fork/spoon) left-handed. When drumming, I have a left-hand lead (in a right-hand world, which makes it hard to play on a line).

 

I play guitar, use scissors, use the mouse... well, mostly everything else right-handed. I naturally step with my right foot, but because of marching band have managed to suppress it to the left.

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i tried learning guitar a few times when i was a little kid and always picked it up left handed but was told to turn it round the other way, wasnt even asked if i was left handed so when i started again properly when i was about 11/12 i played right hand cos then i could play other peoples guitars, after that i never really bothered trying again, it would be worth it for the dexterity i suppose.

Im left handed for practically everything but i can almost write ok with my right hand especially backwards, theres a really good book out by some guy who did a big study on left handed guitarists and the excerpts discussed in guitarist magazine regarding the book seemed very interesting, il try an dig it out and get the name if anyones interested, i might get the book at same time

like most things in life, its whatever gets you through it at the end of the day

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and the fact that the kurt cobain inspired/designed jagmaster only having made a fraction in lefty was completely rediculous based on the priciples the designer being a lefty... my rant is over....

 

 

The leap of logic here is almost as staggering as the leap in capitalization, punctuation, and spelling. If only 10% of people are lefties, why in the world would they make jagmasters in a disproportional ratio to the potential purchasers?

 

I am one of the few that is colorblind, should I complain about the fact that the entire stoplight system is based on colors and the rest of the world should cater to me? Maybe I should have gotten mad at the FAA when I had to go through a special test to get my pilot's license. You know it is difficult to tell VASI's while landing or to spot the green, white, and red lights used for communication in flight but somehow I manage.

 

Evol, all I can say is, adapt and overcome, stop complaining. Learn punctuation and stop mentioning how much you make and how much your guitars cost might also make you seem like a more gregarious fellow.

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