Sirchronique wrote:
Left handed players have an advantage with right handed instruments, Feadoggie?
Yes. We happen to disagree. I've been teaching strings for 50 years now and I just tell it as I've witnessed it. They're only called "right-handed" instruments because some closed minded individual (that could have been a nun, based on my earliest experiences with left handedness) labeled them that way. Leave off the label and any young player will pick up the instrument and figure out what to do. Same with flutes and whistles.
Sirchronique wrote:
As for banjos, I agree that any right handed instrument should be easily made into left handed with no problems at all. However, you mention guitars, and this has made me curious.
You've perhaps mistaken what I've said then. Remember that I suggest there should be no need for neck-out-to-the-right guitars and such. That does not mean that I would suggest that all players who have learned to play with the neck out to the right should just flip a standard guitar or mandolin around. As I did say.
Feadoggie wrote:
But if you've played with the neck out to the right all your life though, so be it.
My suggestion to Norm was to test drive banjos set-up in the standard layout. That should give him a sense or playability and sound. Single string playing can give him a sense of the action, tone and volume. The conversion to left-handed layout could/should follow. And it is a snap to do - he should even press for the cost of the conversion to be zero, zip, nada.
I've only talked about flipping the tenor banjo around and that's what the subject is here. Isn't it? Tenor banjos are among the most symmetrical instruments out there. Even the bridge is reversible. Gotta love that.
Many guitars and mandolins don't usually flip around as easily as a four string banjo. Bracing patterns for bass presence differ inside of acoustic guitars and some mandolin type instruments (but not all). Scrolls on F style mandos do get in the way when played Jimi style. Cutaways end up in the wrong place (unless it's a Mosrite Venture's guitar and then they begin to look normal). A five string banjo would require a new neck. Etc., etc., etc..