Shopping for the Leftys?

[AJLucas]

Hi Grapefruit 1 and others. I saw my name mentioned so I thought I should let you know that I've built a couple of left handed guitars recently that are owned by people locally to me here in Lincoln. If any of you are interested in coming over and having a test drive, they have both said they're happy to lend them to me.

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[Righty-Lefty]

well as a former righty now forced due to injury to play left handed...
there are a lot more lefty models out there than i first thought but as others have said trying b4 you buy can be difficult. so far my process has been to try every lefty that comes up local on craigslist.... throw out cheap bids on any that pique my interest on fleabay... and order others through places like GC or MF so that i can return the dogs.

so while in 20 yrs of right handed playing i owned a total of 4 guitars and kept 3 for most of that time i have now bought/sold/traded over a dozen lefties so far with only a $50 loss when i bought a hard case for a guitar i just couldn't learn to love

i now have a nice strat with new pups and a custom birds eye neck
a fender hellcat acoustic with the most electric-like neck (maple and dang near the profile of my strat) nice warm hog top but quiet.... my couch/latenight guitar
A wonderful copy of a taylor dread (for sale now i don't care for the taylor sound) plays awesome sounds identical to my dads real taylor i just don't care for it
and a sigma dr28 that solved my martin gas for now and at less than the cost of an x series

this all pretty much covers my needs for now but when it comes time for my 'real' martin i imagine i will be taking some long road trips to find 'the one'

guess what im saying is it is tougher but if you follow some simple rules you will eventually find guitars you love
1. don't buy for more than what you can reasonably and quickly resell for
2. the internet and stores with liberal return policies are probably your best bet

downside... spend more time ordering returning buying and selling... also many of the 'best bang for the buck' brands don't make too many lefties and when they do they usually cost enough that they aren't quite the deal the righties are
upside... getting a lot of NGDs even if the NG doesnt stick around

[DiabloRouge]

I am currently trying to track down a Recording King ROS-6L here in the UK and it is proving very frustrating. In most cases when I have had replies to email enquiries I have been met with negatives, in one case the dealer was very to the point, his reply was just one word NO
Now I know that this is not a big ticket guitar but I am just a 58 year old beginner who would like to own a 12 fret slothead, the ROS-6L has good reviews and is within my meager budget, I cannot justify buying a £1500 Martin or Larrivee (though of course I would love to own either). I have emailed the new UK distributors of Recording King as advised by their US website and have still to receive a reply. I have had a reply from a dealer in Ireland who is happy to convert a ROS -16 to a lefty for me but of course this will add almost £150 to the cost of the cost of a guitar which is already more expensive than the ROS-6L. If any of you guys know of any UK dealers with a lefty version of the ROS-6L or able to get one in I would be most grateful.

Midge

P.S I just noticed that AJLucas is based in the same city as me, Hi Adrian...........................................

[Otterhound]

Originally Posted by paulzoom

The wider the neck the more room for string spacing which allows you to easier pluck the strings. If you have thin fingers it may not be an issue but for others It matters.

That sounds like a valid argument for wider bridge/saddle spacing to me .
Of course , my question was about the nut , not the neck . Yes , there is a difference in my world .

[Grapefruit1]

Adrian, thanks for chiming in – most unexpected. I appreciate your offer to have the opportunity to try out a couple of lefties (and also the goodwill of your customers in being prepared to loan them). Lincoln’s not too far from my in-laws in Barlborough so I’ll work out a way to combine my next visit to them with a detour off the A1 to nip over to Lincoln. I’ll send you a PM once I've figured out some dates.

Otterhound - In my albeit limited experience, I’ve noticed that many people tend to speak of neck width and nut width interchangeably – i.e. they tend to speak of the neck width in context of the point that the neck intersects with the nut. Of course the closer to the body you go, the wider the neck gets in comparison to the width of the nut. Is this the difference you’re referring to? I presume this reflects the distance between the strings at the bridge.

In terms of playability - there are likely more factors at play here such as: neck profile, distance between the strings affecting the overall ‘togetherness’ or ‘separation’ of the sounds of individual strings, scale length, size and shape of the player’s hands and fingers, and the angle of the strings in relation to each other along their axis from bridge to nut (Luthiers please feel free to correct my layman’s interpretations here – I’m just applying what seems sensible to me).

But in terms of your query as it relates to neck width and fingerpicking I’d suggest that the neck width (at the neck) influences the space available for your fretting hand and the neck width (at the body) influences the space available for your picking hand. A common preference in people who play predominantly with their fingers seems to be the desire for a bit more ‘room to move’ for fingerpicking arrangements than the regular 1 & 11/16th nut width allows.

IMO people’s experiences differ and I don’t hold much stock with the notion that whether you play with your fingers or a pick, should dictate which neck width should suit you definitively. While there are preferences, people adapt: i.e. I’ve just spent a week on holiday in France with my GS Mini packed in the car – took a couple of days to get used to it but no biggie! Now my ‘full size’ guitars feel like Cello’s and my 12 string feels like an upright bass.

People probably worry / obsess a bit too much about these things. As far as I’m concerned it’s an intuitive thing based on a person's individual experience of what 'feels' right. Hope this helps. If not – please be assured I meant well.
Cheers,
G

[blue-wily-fox]

For someone in N. California…..just FYI……I have my wife's guitar which she doesn't play and wants me to get rid of….lol…., a SCGC PJ parlor guitar with Sitka and EIR. Pretty little thing, I'm actually thinking of getting my luthier to change the nut, bridge and saddle, and making it into a right hander. After reading all these posts about how difficult it is to find them lefties , I'm re-considering. This one has a 13/4" nut, with some scuffs on the back, (no Rash) that could probably be repaired or buffed easily. Rest is in EXCELLENT shape. If anyone is interested (no shipping, only cash transactions, face to face in the Bay Area/SFO) you can PM me or better email me from my info page, and let me know if you would like to try it…..I'll take a couple of weeks before sending it to my luthier…..I guess we right handers don't realize we are so spoiled by the luxury of choice….sorry for you lefties…..keep plucking'!!

[barley]

Within a 150 mile radius of my home there are exactly two left-handed guitars costing more than $600 for sale right now by retailers. This number has remained fairly constant for at least the past two years. My guess is this represents less than one percent of all the guitars in stock in this category.

I don't think there is room for this to be anything like a vast improvement for lefty players in my part of the U.S. I have developed a great appreciation for any shop that stocks even one nice lefty, regardless of where they are located. I have to assume the owners and managers of successful guitar retailers know vastly more than I do about the profitability of stocking lefties.

Like many lefties, I look for any advice I can find that doesn't emphasize the importance of playing as many guitars as possible before buying. The only advice that could be of less value to this lefty is to build my own guitars. If Salvador Dali ever painted a guitar, that's what my build would look like.

[Ciarre]

When I was a little kid, I saw this girl writing with her left hand and her wrist was bent at an awful angle. I asked her why she was writing that way, and she told me it was so she wouldn't smear the ink. Even though I was only about 10 years old, it really hit me that someone would have such difficulty with that. So I began paying attention to the other things that lefties had to deal with. It's a long list and many things surprised me. Like scissors.
There was even a store called something clever like On the Other Hand or something that sold left-handled specific tools, goods and other items. I picked up a manual can opener and was stymied by how hard it was to use righty. They didn't last too long. So it doesn't seem very strange that there aren't enough opportunities for left handlers in the guitar world, either.
Wish it weren't so. But there are some of the 90% who do sympathize with the rest.
And if it makes you feel any better, I play like I'm using a left handed guitar...