Why Left Handed Guitars?

We all know that there are less left handed people than right handed people in the world. Analysts calculate that 1 in 10 human beings are left-handed. This means the total amount of left handers living in the world is over 600 million. According to Scientific estimates, there will be a billion left-handed people living on planet Earth by 2020. Another interesting fact is that the number of left handed people born in 2005 were double those born in 1990.

So while the left handed population appears to be multiplying as time rolls on, there is a contrast of trend happening in another area: availability of left handed musical instruments, specifically left handed guitars. This is not new News. Left Hand guitars have always been in short supply, but to be fair, many major manufacturers have tried to accommodate left handed players by providing at least a basic range of lefty guitars. Probably if there had never been a Kurt Cobain, or a Paul McCartney or a Jimi Hendrix, everyone today would be playing right handed guitar regardless of what hand they used to write with!

However, there is a real DANGER occurring here. A recent survey of left handed school children concerning left handed guitars showed a staggering group view that playing left handed guitar was “too hard” or “not worth the trouble” and hence out of defeat, the majority of these children feel obliged to deny their left handedness and start learning to play guitar like “everyone else.” I suspect that these survey results probably do not differ from survey results that might have been obtained in the 1990s, or 1970s or 1960s. Strangely, the 1980's was the only era when there appeared to be a “better selection” of left handed guitars than prior and recent times. For example, the last time the Gibson Explorer was made in left hand was in the mid 1980's. It has never been available as a production left handed model since.

Left Handed guitarists wanting an Explorer style guitar do have a new choice: Gaskell Guitars, the only left handed guitar manufacturer on the planet that makes left handed guitars in the models that are not available in left hand elsewhere. The Gaskell “Classic” is an Explorer-esque left handed guitar, easily available, from Gaskell Guitars in Australia. (http://www.gaskellguitars.com)

SUPPORT LEFT HANDED GUITARISTS! Let's not allow left handed guitarists be thought of as a “dying race.”