I hope I never have to flip a righty guitar or bass - it looks so stupid, unless your last name is "Hendrix". It's hard going on a quest to find the particular make/model you're looking for, but you never know when one will turn up. I was on a quest to find a lefty Danelectro 56-U2 reissue a few years back, and my preferred color was the copper burst. I gave up after much searching. Then I wandered into my local pawn shop one day, and there it was! And they only wanted $160 for it! A big thanks goes out to the crackhead who pawned it. That same pawnshop sold me a USA made Fender Tele that had been autographed by Joe Strummer, for the absurd price of $500. I'm not kidding! It has a Seymour Duncan bridge pickup, so it's not original equipment, but the Duncan sounds great. And of course there's no way to actually verify Strummer's signature, but I looked up images of his John Hancock on google and it's a very close match.
The question I have is this: if you're a righty, how do you decide which axes to pick up? I mean, I go to my local Guitar Center and they always have the same five or six lefty guitars: MIM Strats and Teles, some Ephiphone Les Pauls (which sounds awful!), some MIM Fender jazz basses (why is there no MIM lefty p-basses?!?!?!), and some Ibanez metalhead basses. Once they had a lefty Gibson Les Paul, and every once in a while I've seen a $1300 Gibson SG. But if you're a righty, where do you even begin? My first guitar was a lefty Strat because that was the only lefty guitar Musician's friend offered at the time. Of course, I got lucky in that its' a great guitar. My bass now is a lefty Fender Jazz with natural wood finish - beautiful! - but it's sad that I couldn't get a P-Bass to compare it to side by side. And don't give me that Squire rap - I had a Squire P-Bass Special first and I was close to booking a plane ticket to the factory in Indonesia and demanding they build me another one. What a dog that axe was!
So I think what I'm trying to convey is though it is frustrating to feel like you're against the odds, it makes it so much sweeter when you come across a lefty axe that suits you.
That being said, there's another pawn shop in the city where I live (Philadelphia) that has a lefty Danelectro DC Bass in silver sparkle for sale. I'm a moron for not buying it already, but the guy's asking $400 and he's firm on that. Really I'd like to pay closer to $300, so I might end up putting that money towards my American P-Bass Fund.
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