Ask Hendrix or Cobain

~Aizen

A classical guitar is symetrical apart from the bridge. Almost all bridges are in a loose socket and can be reveresed. So flip thebridge, reverse the strings and you have a "lefty" guitar. There have been classical left hand playing guitarists.

The entire idea of a left handed guitar is silly. Just learn to play right handed. Both hands have important jobs to do and if anything fretting is the more challenging task. You would be doing that with your dominant hand which is a real advantage. There are lots of reasons, most of them already pointed out here, why re-stringing a right handed guitar is not the way to go.

Tommymc has given the perfect answer.

Best thing is to learn right handed.

Otherwise, buy a left handed guitar. The idea of buying a right handed guitar and having it converted is crazy when you can buy a guitar that's already left handed.

get a left handed acoustic guitar better f you can. otherwise reset it for lefty.

Hi Maximus, There is some disagreement on this, but I think most people agree that left handed people don t have any more trouble learning on a "right handed" guitar than anybody else. In fact, most lefties do learn on regular guitars....you just don t notice them. Here s the thing: guitarists use both hands for equally complex functions. No matter which hand you favor, the other one will need a lot of attention and is going to feel clumsy at first. And I can guarantee you that righties have a devil of a time trying to form chords and do intricate fingering with their left hands.

There are HUGE advantages to playing the standard way. If you go lefty. all the chord diagrams, tab, and learning materials will be backwards. Learning guitar is hard enough without having to mentally reverse all your instructions. The choice of left handed guitars is very limited. You won t be able to play other people s guitars. If you ever want to learn other stringed instruments, it s almost impossible to find left handed models.

If you do decide to learn "left handed", there are several options. The best is to buy a left handed guitar. Some people....very very few....just turn a regular guitar over without re-stringing it. This makes for awkward fingering, and your sound is different because your up-strums will sound like down-strums. The third option is to re-string a regular guitar backwards.

There s more to stringing a guitar backwards than you might think....and it does make a difference that it's an acoustic guitar. First, the obvious is that the slots that the strings run through at the top of the neck (the "nut") are cut to the width of the strings. Since you ll be swapping position of the thicker bass strings, the nut slots will have to be re-cut...or the nut completely replaced. Equally important...but less obvious is the slant of the bridge saddle. If you look closely, you ll notice that (on steel stringed guitars) the bridge saddle is more forward for the treble strings. This is critical for correct "intonation". If you reverse the strings without reversing the way the strings cross over the bridge, the guitar will never sound in tune. On an acoustic guitar, there is no way to adjust the bridge saddle. Most electric guitars have adjustable saddles, so it s relatively simple to make this adjustment. Of course, the down-side of reversing an electric guitar is that the controls will be in an awkward location, and possibly interfere with your strumming.

Bottom line is that there are many good reasons to just learn on a so-called right handed guitar. (You never hear of pianos or horns or other instruments as left or right handed) If you decide that you simply must learn lefty, get a true left handed guitar. They typically don t cost more...they re just available in fewer models.

Just buy a lefty. They're made especially for you.

You can restring right to left, but there needs to be work done.

You hafta change to a left hand nut and bridge. The bridge on an acoustic is how intonation is tuned. Open string is pitchef 1 octave higher when fretted on 12.

The biggest thing is action or string height. A fret board has a radius from 6th E to 1st E. But you can play it The intonation on electric is mechanically adjusted with screws. An acoustic the bridge is filed to get intonation which puts the theoretical center (length x dia /2 ) of the string at 12th fret.

Go to www.stewmac.com You ca.n buy a left hand bridge and nut or blanks and make your own. Just know the length of the nut and bridge. You would sand the bottoms to get close to string height or action.

I'm a guitar tech trained by a Master Fender Luthier.

EDIT:I'm retired military. I have the

?poster options. Should he take it to a tech?Probly.I'm mechanically gifted. He may be too I don't make a livin bein a tech.i do it because I love working on guitar