Left Handed Guitars

Left Handed Guitars Australia

What are left handed guitars? Do they sound different? Are they cheaper than regular guitars? Will my local music store have them in stock? If you are asking yourself any of these questions, read on. I’ll give you the facts so you can determine if a lefty guitar is for you.

Making Left Handed Guitars

Basically, all guitars have six strings and are designed to be played by right-handed people (although I’m sure there are exceptions out there). This means that when you try to play a normal (right handed) guitar, the strings and your left hand get in the way of each other. For a right handed player, this isn’t really a problem – your left and right hands are mirror images of each other and therefore complementary. The opposite is true for southpaws (cough). It makes playing right handed guitars very easy for them, but not so much for us.

A left handed guitar is basically just a right handed guitar turned upside down. This way, when you play it, the strings and your hand aren’t fighting each other.

Why Were Left Handed Guitars Invented?

Before about 1950, there was no such thing as a “lefty” guitar on the market – only right handed guitars. Left handed people would play right handed guitars upside down and backwards (strings in correct order, but flipped over). But not to be outdone, lefties soon figured out that if they played the guitar like this…it actually makes playing a lot easier. And since no one was making lefty guitars for them, they just flipped the guitar over and re-strung it.

However, in order to make things more complicated, back then right handed guitars had a totally different stringing pattern from lefties, so they couldn’t just flip them over and play on – they had to get creative.