Lefty strat with reverse headstock

[Warren May]

I had a nice one piece mahogany body blank that I've been saving to do a Strat. I cut it out and routed the body using a template but without thinking, I routed the tremolo cavity on the wrong side of the blank so now it has become a left-handed Strat project. I had already started a right-handed mahongany neck for it and could use it to be a sort of Lefty with Reversed Headstock..I've seen a couple online but never in person. That way I could use the inline tuners I have for it. Just made a Padouk pickguard to keep from buying a left handed pickguard but will have to buy a tremolo for it. Any opinions about the Reverse Headstock idea? Can I use the usual CTS pots and 5-way switch but just mirror image the wiring for it? I may make rosewood knobs but if not do they make lefty knobs with numbers reversed? Any other lefty oddities that I need to be aware of? (It's hard to think backwards...don't know how they operate in a right handed world).

[Greg Robinson]

Hi Warren,
Bummer! Oh well, at least you can forge on ahead. The reverse headstock may look a little weird if it's the traditional Strat shape, that's usually done with different styles, but no reason you can't do that.
Most production lefties use normal pots, it's just too hard to find reverse audio taper pots, and for Strats, there's the problem of the knobs too. So don't mirror image it, just wire it up like a righty (otherwise the taper will be wrong, and you'll get all your volume change between 0-1, and almost nothing over the rest of the range).

[Warren May]

Thanks Greg. Looking at the neck on the body in a mirror I agree the traditional Fender shape is a little odd upside down. Guess it's a matter of taste. I'm thinking of reshaping the headstock to take the big hump off. Sounds like lefties go from 10 to 0...I suppose they can't crank it up to 11 I had a lefty bandmate who played a right handed Gibson LP Jr and he always turned his volume pot to right between 9 and 10 where he said it gave him maximum drive.

[Greg Robinson]

Yep, lefties still turn their pots clockwise, not anti-clockwise, just like righties. If you look hard enough, you can find reverse audio taper pots, but most lefties are used to right handed pots anyway.

[Peter Wilcox]

And somehow we've learned to read and write left to right also, though we do hold our pencils funny.

[Warren May]

Hello Peter! I always heard that lefties were more creative than us righties anyway. Knowing you are a lefty proves that point. I remember some of your challenge builds where you used things like old copiers/printers to create things I would never have even imagined.

I'm finding building a left-handed guitar not as easy as it looks. Maybe Hendrix had the right idea by just adapting to the right-hand world?

[Peter Wilcox]

Hi Warren. Though left handed, I play instruments right handed, so I'd have instruments available wherever I was.

That's my excuse for never becoming any good at any of them. I guess I should have learned to play Hendrix style.

[Steve Senseney]

Is it possible to fill you cavity, and route it on the other side?

[Warren May]

Steve, I didn't think of that but since it is a Strat I could have certainly filled it with a plug since most of the area would be covered by a Strat pickguard. But I've already gone to far with this one and have all the pickup cavities, neck pocket and jack hole now routed. I ordered a lefty tremolo for it and made a pickguard from Padauk. I've looked at a lot of reverse headstock guitars and the Suhr headstock design looks better to me than that big Strat honker so it doesn't stick out too much. But if I ever make the same mistake again, filling the route and flipping it over would certainly be an option to consider. I'm pretty sure I'll find a completely different way to mess up the next build (The next build, by the way, is already giving me head scratching practice...a Tele-Strat-SG-PRS-LP frankenstein).

[Trevor Gore]

Stevie Ray Vaughan played a right handed Strat with a left hand trem unit. Dick Dale played left handed Strat with a RH neck (i.e tuners down).

Strikes me that a LH Strat with a RH neck and RH trem would be fine. I'm right handed, but I once got close to converting a RH Strat to LH trem and LH neck. It was the LH trem that was hard to get, 15 years ago.

[Randy Roberts]

Research has shown that all of us are born right handed and that only about 10% of us overcome it.<g>

[Jamie Unden]

I like reverse headstocks, and I don't know why the 'standard' way became the standard. It makes more sense to me to reach up from the bottom rather than try and reach over the top - more ergonomic.