Greetings to all! Does this ever happen to you? You go into a music store, see the bass of your dreams, take it down off the wall and feel stupid trying to pluck it 'cause its a righty, wishing somehow your fairy godmother would materialize, wave her magic wand, and turn it into the left handed confection you've been drooling over so you could happily buy it?
As an example, I just waited 4 months for my Schecter Custom 5 to come in on order, when I have been seeing the right hand version hanging on the wall at my local Guitar Center all that time and have been excitedly taking it down and hopelessly plucking it.
Do you scour music stores whenever you're traveling looking for that one incredible rare lefty jewel? How many times have you gone into the bass area and to your horror realize there are NO lefites at all? As lefties, I feel we are a discriminated group of bassists who are sometimes made to pay extra for LH and can rarely find the instrument we want. So we are very often forced to compromise...
And then we are told by some that that's not NORMAL to play it "backwards" !! Have you ever had a bass teacher tell you they discourage their beginning students from playing left and try to correct them? When I started playing at 17, my very first bass was a right hand 1972 Fender Precision strung backwards. I never could intonate it properly. There's nothing wrong with playing lefty, you just need the right instrument!
To me, a beautiful left handed bass rivals a fine piece of rare jewelry...
Recently, I started making my own basses and hot rodding them out of frustration with what's out there: Here's a cute story: Being a huge Geddy Lee fan, I wanted a LH Geddy Lee Signature Jazz Bass. So I shopped around, visited music stores, and finally called the Fender Custom Shop about the possibility of having one made. Well, Fender doesn't make a Lefty Geddy Lee. I got a quote from them for about $4000 street price to build it custom! Now, keep in mind you can buy a righty "off the shelf" for around $600 at your local music store, and they are not rare by any means.
So, I went out and bought parts. I found a replacement Geddy maple neck, got a black LH Jazz Bass body, ordered Geddy Lee replacement pups from Fender, bought a Badass II Bridge, Gotoh black tuners, Rotosound strings, and THEN I started improving it. My good friend Jonesy in Indiana customized a wiring setup with 500k pots. vintage cloth wiring and a Sprague Bumblebee capacitor. I got a motorcycle chopper builder to powder coat the various parts black, and then I designed my own custom pickguard out of raw stock and cut it carefully on a router. The result is a bass that is I feel way cooler than anything Geddy plays and guess what? It's a LEFTY! It's completely blacked out and has a Right Hand neck so the tuners point down. It sounds incredible and plays incredible and it gets a lot of attention whenever I pull it out. It is pretty wild looking in an understated way. I call it the ZiggyLee Jazz Bass and I will never sell mine, as it now has become very personal.
I currently own 8 basses including a Warwick, the most lefty friendly of bass makers. I am looking for a fretless Warwick 4 Thumb or Corvette if anyone knows of one. Thanks for listening and peace to all... Ziggy
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