Left Hand All
Left Hand All
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Left-handed guitars and left-handed bass guitars. What's going on with this?
In the last few years, or at least since the 2000's several well known guitar manufacturers have stopped making left handed guitars.
This is at a time when the number of left handed people being born is on the increase and is now not 10, but 12 per cent of the world's population, so they say!
Also in comparison to how the guitar is played today, the original, and now ancient view of the guitar being thought of as being a "stringed instrument played by strumming" (actual dictionary definition!) is over in reality. To be really logical and sensible in assessing how best to learn to play a guitar today, it makes more sense that right handed people should be learning to play the guitar left-handed, with their "strong" hand is on the fingerboard, doing the "work" considering it is not all about "strumming" anymore and has not been since Rock n Roll came to be.
What meant "playing guitar" 100 years ago and what it means today are two completely different things.
Despite this, the truth of the matter has been suppressed and smothered by 40+ years of MARKETING and SOCIAL CONDITIONING motivated by money making purposes going totally against the truth, practicality, or recognition of the evolution of guitar playing.
Today, most people play guitar right handed. This means they use their right hand to strum the guitar. Chords and scales are done by the left hand.
If you were a right handed person, why would you expect to learn how to write with a pen, or use a tool left handed? If that was being pushed on you, wouldn't you question the motive behind it?
Here we have today, a world where 89% of the world play guitar right handed, and new kids wanting to learn to play guitar are pretty much forced into playing right-handed even if they don't want to, and told downright lies like "a guitar is like a piano – there is only one way to play it."
In and amongst these issues, we have several major guitar companies deciding to pull the plug on left-handed guitar manufacturing. Although this leaves the door wide open for the world's one and only solely left-handed guitar manufacturer Gaskell Guitars (http://www.gaskellguitars.com) to dominate the market, it is something worth looking into, considering smoke screens already exist on this subject, as described previously herein.
Gaskell guitars are designed BY a lefty guitarist, FOR lefty guitarists, so there is no comparison when it comes to getting down to the nitty gritty on the subject of left-handed guitars or left-handed bass guitars.
Guitar manufactures who make production models do not really care about left handed guitars and left-handed guitarists. Small, boutique builders who would build anything for anybody, no matter what are a different story. Hooray for them. Boo to the big corporate, money-motivated guitar manufacturers who have abandoned their left-handed clientele.
If you wanted to get a left handed Rickenbacker, Gibson, Paul Reed Smith, or BC Rich guitar right now at the time of this writing you will be stiff out of luck. That is not to say that it may change in the future, but for now this is the case.
The common denominator? Most of these companies have ceased left handed guitar production since 2008. What happened in 2008? The World Economic Downturn began. So, we may even tentatively accept this as an "excuse" but in reality it is not. When times are tough, you increase your marketing and you try and REACH MORE POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS, not cut a percentage off from your business.
The latter is what these companies have done. Whatever the reasons are, they have ABANDONED LEFT HANDED GUITARISTS AND LEFT-HANDED BASS PLAYERS.
All you need to do, if you are a left handed guitarist or left handed bassists is to SUPPORT THOSE WHO SUPPORT YOU. Support Gaskell Guitars. Buy Gaskell guitars and basses. Turn your back on those who have turned their backs on you. Do not grovel to them as if being a left-handed guitarist is a "disability."
Support those who support you, and you can't go wrong. Buy Gaskell, and any other brand that looks after left handed guitarists. More information here: http://www.gaskellguitars.com and here too: http://www.gaskellguitars.com/models
About the Author
Kevin Gaskell is the business owner and designer of Gaskell Guitars which is a manufacturer of left handed guitars and basses, located in Sydney Australia. Gaskell guitars are available world wide.