lefty-guitars.de ... the lefty guitar databaseDear lefty fellows, the work is done! this database was built up during the last seven years, from 2004 to 2011. It took me some thousand hours of work, but it would not have been possible without the help of the many, many left handed guitarists, luthiers, guitar manufacturers and members of lefty guitar forums from all over the world. For all you contributors I like to say a very big thank you!. A very important point: If you find pictures of one of your own guitars in this database and yourself not being mentioned, please send a mail so that I can add "pictures by courtesy of..." or something like that.... And of course I´ll delete the pictures, if you want me to. All pictures are from different sources: the web (ebay auctions, google image search), private photos, catalogs, advertisements, official websites of the guitar producers and online guitar stores and many more... Sadly in many cases I do not know who may have the rights for publishing these pictures. In every case I have done several graphic operations with the source pictures: scaling, rotations, color corrections, sharpening, and many more manipulations... I take the opportunity to use the material too, where I do not know the sources and the rights situation. If you are the holder of the rights of one of the used pictures, I hope you agree with the non-commercial use. And again: you only need to send me an email and I will delete them as soon as possible or add your name with the pictures. But: I do hope you understand the reasons to offer them to all the lefty guitarists out there. If you are a dealer or manufacturer or whatever, I can give you the offer to set a link to your site.... I think it can only be in your interest to show what you offer to all the leftys out there. I have NO commercial interest in offering my collected material. There will be no advertisements on this site too. My aim is offering a very informative source for lefty guitarists all over the world: for information, for inspiration, for your own research and as "eye-candy"... This source may be helpful to search for concrete existing guitars of which you never have thought they could exist somewhere... If you KNOW that a special guitar has been documented here, you know that it will be out there somewhere.... Maybe it´s waiting for YOU ;-) And now some words to my motivation for building up this database: If you are a left handed guitarist - like myself - you may have made some of the following experiences: 1. Your local guitar dealer doesn´t offer one single or only a few lefty guitars. 2. Guitar dealers do have only few information about available lefty guitars or they tell you they´re too hard to get. 3. There is no or few information in catalogs or advertisements of dealers or manufacturers about lefty guitars. Sometimes you can find some very small words like "lefty model available", but most of the times they show no pictures of the lefty versions. 4. Since today I do not have any knowledge of an overview about lefty guitars produced in the past and present time. You have to search for yourself, put all the small pieces together, hoping to get what you looked for.... Sometimes these searches are more confusing and irritating than enlighting... 5. Often enough a certain favorite guitar seems to be only available in a right handed version. But is this a fact? One day in 2004 these experiences led me to a deep and continuous research, to try to get an overview about any actual lefty-guitar and those produced in the past of the last 90 years too. After some days of research I had knowledge of about 100 different models. I was amazed because in my 30 years of guitar passion I had never been confronted with such a varity. My database was weekly growing and as I got about 500 different lefty models I thought about sharing it with other lefty guitarists. Now, after seven years of research, I know about more than 6600 (july 2011; now - in may 2012 - more than 7200!) different lefty electric guitars! A mighty collection! And every day I learn more about lefty guitars not mentioned here before... In the first year I sorted out all lefty acoustic guitars and lefty basses because I had to accept that I have to set a limit to have a chance to get it done one day. Now we have july 2011 and it took me many thousand hours to collect pictures and information and building up the online database. That was hard work and not only one time I was just before making a stop. One thing for not to be misunderstood: I do regard every model as different, if it only has a different color. For instance a Fender Mexican Strat in white color and the same one in black will be regarded as two different models. So in fact there are many different Fender Strat and Gibson Les Paul models. I did this, because nearly every lefty model was only available in black color (this seems to be the favored color), so that it IS a remarkable fact if a guitar was produced in other colors too. I am always thankful for any sort of pictures and information material (catalogs are welcome!) about lefty guitars. And if you see any wrong information or links that lead to nowhere please let me know and I´ll do instant corrections. So please feel free to send your material to: sven@lefty-guitars.de And sorry, english is not my native language, but I have decided to use the english language for increasing the amount of potential users.... Sven Zade, Germany (July 2011; edited: may 2013) |