What Kind of Guitar Should I Buy If I'm Left-Handed?
If you are left handed and want to play guitar, you have a very important decision to make before purchasing your first guitar: should you get a left-handed guitar or should you learn with a right-handed instrument? There are pros and cons no matter which you choose.
In making a decision, you should try playing both right- and left-handed guitars. One may feel more natural to you. You may find that one hand feels more suited to strum and pick the strings while the other works better for fretting. This may be difficult to tell if you haven't played before. If this is the case, you need to consider additional information in making your choice.
Left-Handed Guitars
The number of choices available for left handed guitars is very small compared to those for right-handed players. There has been an increase in lefty models available over the years, but you still have fewer choices than right-handed players. These models may also be more expensive than their right-handed counterparts.
Right-Handed Guitars
A right-handed guitar offers two possibilities for a left-handed player:
- 1. Playing the guitar right-handed.
- 2. Stringing the guitar in reverse and playing it left-handed.
If you try playing left- and right-handed, and don't notice a significant advantage to either approach, playing right-handed may be the best choice. There are far more right-handed guitar models available.
It is possible to buy a right-handed guitar and string it upside down to use it left-handed (Jimi Hendrix did this). This greatly increases the number of instruments available to you. However, this may not work without some modifications to the instrument. The bridge and nut may be configured specifically for the guitar to be strung correctly. You may need to make significant modifications to both of these parts to allow you to string the guitar in reverse. Pickups may also be wired to work with the guitar strung as a right-handed guitar. The sound may change when strung for left-handed players.
Instructional Materials for Left Hand Guitar
The vast majority of instructional materials can be used for right or left hand. Tablature and music notation are pretty much the same regardless of whether you play right- or left-handed. You will usually only see differences in more complex music that is played with advanced techniques.
Many authors will write lessons with right-handed players in mind, referring to the right and left hands as these players would use them, but you can easily adapt these lessons to left handed playing by understanding that the right hand refers to the picking hand and left hand refers to the fretting hand.
Chord diagrams are the primary area where left-handed players are at a disadvantage. Right-handed diagrams are different from left-handed diagrams. Most books don't include examples of both version, so you either need to find something specifically for left hand or adapt the chord diagrams on your own.
Below is an example of a C major chord diagram with left- and right-handed versions:
