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Right handed electric guitar for lefty?
I mentioned to my mom that I wanted to learn the guitar, so she bought me a really cute pink electric one. Problem is...I have a deformity in my fingers that causes me to have to play left handed even though I'm right handed. Long story short....my guitar is right handed. I know you can restring an acoustic guitar to make it left handed. Can you do the same for an electric or is it completely useless?
With 12 previous answers, I would have thought at least one of them would tell you the complete story. The answer is of course: yes you can turn it around, but there is a lot of tweaking that has to be done. BTW, it's exactly the opposite regarding acoustics.....since their bridges aren't adjustable and the interior bracing isn't symmetric.
The most important adjustment you'll need to make is the bridge. If you notice, bridges (or bridge saddles on acoustics) tend to have a slant to them. The high strings are adjusted farther forward than the bass strings. When you string backwards, this is the single most important adjustment to be made. Otherwise your intonation will be so far off that the guitar will be out of tune on all but the lowest frets. With a tuner, play a string open, then check the note at the 12th fret. it should be the same note, but exactly one octave higher. If the two notes aren't exactly in tune, adjust the individual string by moving the bridge forward or back. Re-tune the open string and repeat until both notes are the same. It's more complicated to explain than to do.
The person who pointed out the issues with the nut is correct. The issue is the thickness of the slots the strings pass through. It's unlikely you can just reverse the nut....the correct fix is to fit a new one. A DIY fix is to leave the nut in place and widen the first three slots. For the ones that are now too wide, you can carefully fill them in with Krazy Glue and refile them.
I've never heard of reversing the pickups and with due respect to the person who suggested that, I think he's mistaken. You'll want to readjust the height of them but a pickup doesn't have bass or treble orientation. I've built my own pickups and I'll be glad to discuss the issue in depth...but it's irrelevant to your problem.
Normally, I tell people that guitars don't have left or right orientation because both hands work as hard. No such thing as a left handed piano, etc. If you have a deformity in your left hand, this may be one case where it makes sense to play 'lefty'. Learning on a left handed instrument puts a lot of limitations on instruments you'll be able to play. 99% of the guitars out there are right handed.
Before embarking down this road, you may wish to check out Django Reinhardt: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Django_Reinhardt He was one of the most astonishing guitarists of the 20th century and played with two paralyzed fingers on his left hand!
Ever think of learning dobro or slide guitar? All your left hand has to do is hold a slide.....
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