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Maker of "left handed" kid guitars (recommendations?)


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Well, my biggest fear seams to be a reality. My soon to be six year old Daughter is left handed (GASP!) As much as I've gently tried and tested her to see if she could be right handed I've come to the realization that she is left handed. She writes left handed, bats left handed, throws left handed and now after the longest time of playing her Barbie guitar (right) handed she now picks it up and strums it LEFT HANDED! When I ask her why she plays the guitar that way she says it "feels better" this way. She said she used to play it the other way (right handed), because that is the way I do it, but it feels funny.

So, she is old enough to understand some basic guitar stuff and I'd like to get her something that is strung correctly for a lefty. I'd like a decent brand of maker of 3/4 size kids guitars. I'm thinking electric since it would be easier to fret and I can tell she would LOVE to plug into something.

Any recommendations?

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Try to find a high end left handed guitar. Very few people stock them.

Playing right handed will make it easier to progress to better guitars. If your daughter happens to play well left handed, she will not be able to try out a variety of guitars. Special orders cost money and usually cannot be returned.

Famous left handed people who play right handed include Steve Morse and Joe Perry.

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Try to find a high end left handed guitar. Very few people stock them.

Playing right handed will make it easier to progress to better guitars. If your daughter happens to play well left handed, she will not be able to try out a variety of guitars. Special orders cost money and usually cannot be returned.

Famous left handed people who play right handed include Steve Morse and Joe Perry.

Don't forget Paults.

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I have zero interest in pushing her to play right handed. I can see the look on her face when I ask her to play it right handed. It's not natural for her. There will be enough frustration in just learning and I don't want to force something on her that will possibly make her quit. I'm not sure she'll play much at all, but I'd like to give her the opportunity without making it uncomfortable.

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I have zero interest in pushing her to play right handed. I can see the look on her face when I ask her to play it right handed. It's not natural for her. There will be enough frustration in just learning and I don't want to force something on her that will possibly make her quit. I'm not sure she'll play much at all, but I'd like to give her the opportunity without making it uncomfortable.

Honestly at 6 teaching her right handed would be no different. It's going to seem uncomfortable to her anyway for a while. Once she starts playing left handed it's all over. At 6 she will probably be more interested in what the guitar looks like anyway. I bet there is just as many leftys that play right handed than play left handed.

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Try locating something equivalent to a Hamer, import or USA, within 100 miles. If your daughter turns into another Jennifer Batten she will be frustrated with her lack of nice guitars to try out.

I worked in a store with a left handed USA Ovation in stock. The few left handed people who tried it were still disappointed that there were no other high quality left handed guitars to try out in the store. It is a big risk to stock a large number of lefty guitars over $1000.

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I am lefty playing righty, my whole reason was when I was a kid I played Air Guitar to Twisted Sister righty, haven't stopped since.

Daisy Rock seems like a decent option...

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Try to find a high end left handed guitar. Very few people stock them.

Playing right handed will make it easier to progress to better guitars. If your daughter happens to play well left handed, she will not be able to try out a variety of guitars. Special orders cost money and usually cannot be returned.

Famous left handed people who play right handed include Steve Morse and Joe Perry.

Duane Allman was left handed and played right

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I'm a lefty playing right handed.

When I started learning there were no left handed guitars to be had. I had a buddy who just flipped the right handed guitar over and learned to play it upside down. Looked weird as hell but he could rock it out.

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Thanks for all the comments, but she's left handed and I'm pretty set on letting her learn that way. Many of you had no choice due to limited or zero options back in the day. There are decent guitars out there for lefties. With some electronics changes I could dress her up a killer guitar if it progresses that far. If the day comes that she really needs a killer guitar I know where to get her one made. :)

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Thanks for all the comments, but she's left handed and I'm pretty set on letting her learn that way. Many of you had no choice due to limited or zero options back in the day. There are decent guitars out there for lefties. With some electronics changes I could dress her up a killer guitar if it progresses that far. If the day comes that she really needs a killer guitar I know where to get her one made. :)

+1 for your way of thinking.

As a lefty playing lefty I very much understand all the points that everybody makes about availability of right handed guitars but I have to think that at some point it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. If all the lefty's out there keep learning right handed then the situation will continue to remain bleak! I think there really is room for both. I for one am very glad lefty Hamers exist because for me there was no choice, lefty worked and righty didn't. :-)

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For those interested here is a whole slew of cheap lefty guitars to begin with.

Cheap lefty gutiars

For those interested, here is a whole slew of nice lefty guitars:

Nice lefty guitars

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I have a picture of me when I was about 5 years old playing with a toy guitar and I had it left handed, I knew even then what felt right. I was around right handed guitars growing up and never picked them up, it was just unnatural for me. Fast forward years down the road and when I figured out that no one in my family was playing the right handed guitar and I could just string it backwards I picked it up. I guess I get a little pissed when people tell me I should have just learned right handed, I'm a damn lefty and I've never tried to tell a right handed person that they should play left handed. If it didn't matter then they wouldn't have ever bothered to make a left handed guitar in the first place. Steve Morse and Joe Perry are great guitar players but so are Jimi and Tony. It does suck trying to find decent leftys but I would have probably had 100 guitars and been living on ramen noodles for the last ten years if I'd been right handed. The scarcity of leftys keeps the GAS in check. If you start looking at full sized guitars for her check out Carvin, they don't charge an upcharge for leftys and mines been a real nice guitar so far (plus I don't want any more competition for my lefty hamers! hah, j/k).

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Guest Mike Lee

All the right handed people saying lefties should just learn righty because of instrument availability need to STFU, pick up a lefty guitar, and learn to play it. Sure, it will be awkward and unnatural at first, but you'll get the hang of it eventually. Put up or shut up. Yeah, I thought so.

I get so tired of this argument. Handedness is not black and white, it's a continuum. Left handed people tend to be more ambidextrous as a group. I bat and golf right handed, write and throw left handed, kick right footed, and tend towards right eye dominance on some of the common tests. But I simply cannot play a guitar right handed - I can barely even hold one right handed.

Some left handed people are more comfortable playing righty, and some are neutral enough that it doesn't make a difference. But the most important thing is chosing what is most comfortable and natural. No one's choice is any more valid than anyone else's. But forcing someone to play in a manner that is counterintuitive may limit their ultimate development, and will certainly make learning more difficult and frustrating.

I wanted to play guitar for many years before I finally started, a victim of prospective teachers who insisted I should learn right handed when I KNEW I couldn't. Hell, my parents even bought me a righty toy guitar when I was 7 or 8. I tried to playe it left handed because it didn't even occur to me that there was a "right" way. I tried to play some of the chords in the book and it just didn't sound right.

If you think it's bad for lefty guitarists, there is rampant prejudice against lefties in the concert ochestra world. No one wants a lefty violinist or cellist because it looks wrong. I'll say that again - because it "looks" wrong. Think about it.

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I'm a natural lefty who plays righty because that's how I first played air/toy guitar. It wasn't a conscious decision; it just felt right for me to have my dominant hand on the neck. For some reason it's the ONLY thing I do right-handed (actually, I crank off right-handed, but I digress ...). Kudos to you for letting her do whatever comes naturally to her.

And if worse comes to worse, buy her a righty strat and flip it over. One of the coolest looks in the history of rock'n'roll.

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If you think it's bad for lefty guitarists, there is rampant prejudice against lefties in the concert ochestra world. No one wants a lefty violinist or cellist because it looks wrong. I'll say that again - because it "looks" wrong. Think about it.

Damn, I had forgotten about how completely right-handed orchestras are.

In addition to the way it would look with some bows going one way and some the other, there could be a problem with bows and players crashing into each other unless they figured out a way to work it out. I've played with a couple of lefty bass players, though, including one who played acoustic upright. But he was a jazzer.

Could you imagine the upcharge on a left-handed bassoon? :)

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Guest Mike Lee

Could you imagine the upcharge on a left-handed bassoon? :)

That makes the Top 10 list of things that sound dirty, but aren't really!

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