Originally Posted by GuitarBizarre

Don't do it. Albet King did it, and he's a fine player, but you will hurt your enjoyment and progress on the guitar immensely if you attempt to learn it upside down.

Restring it, or better yet, since you're just starting out, learn to play it righty. I'm left handed myself and I play right handed guitar. I actually found it IMPROVED my progress, because the left hand was handling the trickiest stuff. THe only disadvantage I've found is that my right hand picking, if I'm not practicing it much, can sometimes be outpaced by what my left hand is doing, but lots of right handed players run into the same problem, so I hardly put that down to my reversed hand preference.

Its absolutely NOT worth playing a right handed strung guitar left handed. It can, technically, be done, but it is more trouble to find left handed guitars than right handed ones, your controls will be in the wrong places, and you will have to practice ten times as much as anyone else in order to work in a band context.

Heres why:

Right handed guitarist strung right handed: Hey, can you play me an A chord, or a riff in A for the bridge to this track?

You: No, I don't know what an A chord is.

Him - Ok here, let me show you. *plays an A chord*

You - *tries to copy the standard A chord you've just seen* - OH **** EVERYTHINGS UPSIDE DOWN AND BACKWARDS MY FIGNERS DONT BEND THAT WAY ****

Which then leads to you spending 15 minutes figuring out an entirely new chord shape, likely much more complex, in order to play a chord that a right handed guitarist, or a left handed guitarist strung correctly, could have played in 15 seconds.

It *WILL* hurt your development as a musician, and if you're just starting, it will likely put you off guitar forever. Its hard enough already to stick with playing guitar, its not an easy thing to learn. Don't make it even harder on yourself by trying to be a maverick with your stringing practices, otherwise you'll find everything ten times as difficult, and vastly screw yourself over in the long AND short terms.


Its also worth considering that guitars are set up from the factory to be strung correctly. It can and WILL screw up your guitars setup and so on if you do this. I can explain exactly how and why if you want me to aswell. I honestly think the best thing is to spend a couple of months playing the guitar right handed.

If at the end of that time you really, REALLY want to be a left handed guitarist, go for it, but buy a left handed guitar first, because intonation and tuning on a right handed guitar strung lefty will be WAY out, and will make everything you play go out of tune. Especially on an acoustic, since on those intonation can't be adjusted.