Left Handed PEOPLE On The Increase?

Don’t ask me why, but this afternoon I found myself browsing the New Scientist website for articles relating to being left handed.  I guess it’s just natural that a by-product of running a left handed guitar website is developing an interest in the reasoning behind our ‘gift’.

So following on from my article asking if numbers of left handed guitar players are increasing, this one should address the science behind why left handers in general are increasing. To quote the great Ben Affleck in his super-manly shampoo commercial…”here comes the science…”

I read many interesting articles but the point that cropped up the most was that left handed people are becoming more and more common.  A study carried out by the University College London (UCL) found that the proportion of left handed people stood at just 3% of the population only 100 years ago, whereas now it has increased to 11%.

Southpaw Guitars – The World’s Largest Left Handed Guitar Store

Chances are, being a left handed guitar player you’ve probably heard of the famous Southpaw Guitar store.  Afterall, if you search Google for ‘left handed guitar’ Southpawguitars.com is the number one result to pop up! This week David Kaplan of the Houston Chronicle interviewed the owner, Jim Duncan.

Left handed guitars are hard to come by, which is why Southpaw Guitars thrives.

What’s viewed as a bother for most music instrument stores is Southpaw Guitars’ reason for being. It has almost 1,000 left handed guitars in-house — acoustic and electric.

The Internet benefits Duncan greatly, enabling him to reach lefties around the world. His 30-year-old business quadrupled when he began selling online in the late 1990s, he said.

He expects to take in $1.2 million this year, and the store has generated about $1 million in sales annually each of the past eight years.

‘A great niche’ – Left Handed Guitars!

“He’s found a great niche, since about one out of 10 people is lefthanded. That’s one of the best niche businesses I’ve ever heard of,” said Irwin Miller, a counselor with the Houston chapter of SCORE, a group advising small-business owners.

Today, a small business almost has to have a niche, whether it’s by offering specialized merchandise or offering exceptional service or expertise, Miller said, because you can’t go head-to-head with a mass merchandiser.

Review – Ibanez ORM1L Omar Rodriguez Signature Guitar

This week we have a review of the rather unique Ibanez ORM1 Omar Rodriguez Lopez signature left handed guitar.  Usually I wouldn’t even consider a guitar with retro styled looks such as this one but then I noticed that it was a shorter 24” scale length and my curiosity got the better of me.

Okay, so it’s more a recount of my past month with the ORM1 than a proper review, but hopefully you can still take something from it.  Information on this guitar is rather thin on the ground so hopefully I can help point potential buyers in the right direction.

LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT? NOT ENTIRELY…

I sauntered into my local guitar store exactly 4 weeks ago to the day intent on giving this interesting little guitar a thorough investigation. ‘Little’ is the keyword  here folks as this thing is tiny, I thought someone had mistakenly hung up a GuitarHero controller when I spotted it hiding in the corner. I was almost a little too embarrassed to request to give it a spin.

The sales rep grabbed it down for me and set me up in the store’s soundproof booth so we could have our intimate one-on-one session.  First off, let me tell you i’m glad the room was soundproof because this thing sounded HORRIBLE. To be fair there were a lot of factors affecting the sonic diarrhea taking place in that booth.  I was incredibly sweaty due to it being a beast of a day, I had no idea how to fine tune the amp, the action was ridiculously high and the ORM1 pickup was just weak sounding and incredibly shrill at the same time.