Electric guitar (left handed)

[Downtonbabby]

Hi,

My son has been playing the guitar for two years and loves it. He practises daily as he just enjoys playing. He is really keen to get an electric guitar as he likes more rock type music.
He has asked for an electric guitar for his birthday and we want to get something that will last and is good, but also doesn’t break the bank! Does anyone have any recommendations for a good first (left handed) electric guitar? Also what else will we need to buy to go with it? An amp and lead?

Thanks

I don't think 'left handed guitars' are a thing
you can re string them to play left handed , or do what DP does and just play right handed.
I'd ask the guitar teacher what they recommend

You can't turn an electric guitar upside down and re-string it, because all the knobs will be in the wrong place. Left-handed electric guitars can be found, and the best thing to do is phone around several local music shops to see what they have in stock.

To be honest, the teacher really shouldn't have let your ds start off left-handed in the first place.

DH is a professional guitar teacher. He always says that when his pupils are first starting, it doesn't matter whether you are right or left-handed, neither hand knows what it is doing anyway, so you might as well learn with a right-handed guitar.

He has been learning the classical guitar left handed for the past couple of years so I wonder if it would be hard for him to start again and learn right handed.
I really considered that he should start off right handed, especially as fine motor wise he always struggled a bit more so I didn’t want to add any extra challenge. I just followed the advice of the music shop we got his guitar from who strung his guitar the opposite way and his guitar teacher has never suggested starting off right handed either. Is it just due to the choice of guitars that your husband suggests starting off right handed?

No, it is mainly as I said, when you first start, both hands are equally crap at what they are doing, so you may as well learn right-handed. With reading sheet music it makes no difference, but the diagrams and finger position pictures in tutor books will all be back to front, and you will have to swap all the time to a mirror image. So all that and the reduced choice when it comes to instruments.

If you think about it, all pianos are the same - low notes on the left and high notes on the right. You don't have left-handed pianos. You just learn it as it is.

But since he's been playing for two years left-handed, like you say he would find it hard to change now.

The left hand does all the hard work (I play classical) on any guitar so being left handed is an advantage in my opinion. I am right-handed and my left fingers have grown to become much stronger (not my arm unfortunately!) and agile than my righ hand's fingers. When you first pick a guitar you will naturally hold it one way depending on whether you are left or right handed but both hands will be untrained as pp have already said. I have seen left-handed people play right-handed but as he has been learning left-handed I don't know how easy it would be right now to re-start right-handed.

Having said that, I don't know anything about electric guitars but I know that it's best to go to the guitar shop and play any guitar in your budget and buy the one that has a better sound and is easier to play. When you hear them online you can't really tell. I had read praisies left, right and centre about a guitar on my budget but later I heard a clip on it and then on the same website a comparison clip of a different guitar and it sounded dreadful. When I went to the guitar shop and gave them a list of about 5 guitars I had seen online in my badget, including that guitar, the lady as she was taking me there turned round and confirmed my suspicion by saying "I'll give you the XXXX to play, but you are not going to like it" and she was right.