LeftyBassist.com

I'm tired of waiting for Fender to release a reissue version of the 50's single coil Precision/Tele design in a lefty. I can't find anything even from Fender Japan. On the rare occasion that a lefty SCPB appears for sale used, the prices are just too far gone for me to do anything but laugh.
Doesn't look like there is anything on the horizon either.
So what about picking up a right handed model and reversing it? I'm just wondering about the particulars like the balance and the position of the controls, etc. Anyone ever done this?


Would you go for this one at about $300?
http://www.squierguitars.com/products/search.php?partno=0303080502

or is this one, which sells for about $650, really worth the difference?
http://www.fender.com/products//search.php?partno=0271902550

Yes, I'll bet we've all done it. If I may speak for most of us here...it sucks. Best bet would be to go to Warmoth, get the parts and put one together...they don't charge extra for lefties. It will look right, play right(I mean left), sound great and the world will come together in peace and harmony.

Agreed. Unless you're talking about a symmetrical bass design, I HATE flipping over a righty bass, though apparently it doesn't bother all the annoying righties who buy up lefty basses and mutilate them to look like Hendrix.

There were a few threads about building a '51 P/Tele style bass on the forum in the past. Here's a link to one of them that might be helpful:

http://www.leftybassist.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=175&hilit=tele

Unfortunately I don't have the time, resources, and most important of all, the skill to take on building one from parts...unless it snaps together

If I could, that's what I would do.


For some reason I can't really explain...I don't trust anyone else to build it for me. Friends have offered but I don't know how good they are either.

I want a Fender.

There was an Ebay sale a while back where a guy sort of implied that the piece he was selling was built for him by Warmouth with Fender authorization. That would be the perfect solution for me to have it done that way but it turned out to be a bogus claim.

So it looks like I'm back to square 1 if a righty is not a good way to go.

The day after I go to that great bass clef in the sky, Fender will probably come out with a beautiful lefty SCPB reissue.

Go to Warmouth, get the parts, find a luthier, get it done!

For what it's worth, I searched for several years to find an early 50's reissue; they're out there, here's proof.

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.