For just over 15 years I’ve played the guitar on and off, I’m not very good, I’m certainly never going to be anywhere near as good as Joe Satriani or Steve Vai, I just don’t have the talent, but I do enjoy it.



It’s also very frustrating though, as guitars vary and you need to find one that your comfortable with, which as yet I haven’t. Why? Because it’s near impossible to find ANY left handed guitars let alone the perfect left handed guitar.



A couple of weeks ago I took my wife to a music shop to buy her an electronic piano. While she was choosing I took my son for a wander around the shop to keep him amused. While doing so we had a look at everything else they had in stock and hidden away at the back of the shop I found a lone, dusty left handed electro acoustic guitar and there were a couple of cheap left handed electrics in amongst 50+ right handed guitars.





Why? Around 10% of the population is left handed yet guitar shops never stock that many and far too many guitar manufacturers don’t make ANY of their guitars in left handed models. The ones that do generally only offer a very limited choice of models and those only come with a limited choice of colours (black).



When I asked several manufacturers and shops they told me there was NO demand, well that’s clearly not true, as I’ve got money to spend on them and I know there are others as including quite a number of famous guitarists; Jimi Hendrix, Paul McCartney, Kurt Cobain, Tony Iommi, Bob Geldof and Iggy Pop to name just a few.



Personally I think there appears to be no demand, because us lefties can’t find anything to buy. So there’s probably a good business opportunity here for a specialist left handed guitar manufacturer and a specialist left handed guitar shop. Neither actually have to do lefties exclusively, but if you specialise at least part of the business targeting lefties I’m sure there’s a chance to do well out of this niche.



Please note that I’m aware that a quick Google will show several left handed guitar shops but in reality they carry a limited range and tend to focus on the cheap “beginner models”. The ideal perhaps is for this to be part of a bigger business specialising in products for left handed people. After all according to the book Right-Hand, Left-Hand by Chris manus of University College London:



Left-handed people as a group have historically produced an above-average quota of high achievers.



So we’re an under-severed 10% of the population who might well have a higher than average level of disposable income.



Are you a leftie? If So what’s your experience of finding left handed products? Please let me know in the comments below.