Why Custom Built Guitar for Left Hand Costs Higher?
What is Left Hand Acoustic Guitar?
In common sense, most of us play acoustic guitars or classical guitars with right hand and press frets with left hand. However, according to the statistics, there are around 10% of world population who are left-handed. That means, there are someone who play guitar with left hand and press the frets with right hand. Thus, there must be an instrument fits for lefties to play.
This is where the left-hand acoustic was created. Even if you don’t have an acoustic guitar in hand, you can imagine the outline of it. So, now imagine a mirror image of the average guitar. Everything from string to the addle is opposite. Thus, it allows the player to domain the chords with right hand. That is left-hand guitar.
Custom Guitar of Left-hand Costs Higher?
Compare to the average acoustic guitar, the cost to custom guitar of left-hand is a bit higher. There are reasons for this.
As mentioned, there are ten percent of world population are lefties. And not all of them are playing guitars. Also, among those players, some play acoustic and some play electric. This means that the market volume of left-hand guitar is not as large as average guitar. Thus, the requirement to custom acoustic guitar of left-hand is not as many as average ones. That will cost higher on material, parts and production. At view point of business, this is related with principle of scarcity.
To custom left-hand acoustic guitar, tooling need to be specially made to help the building. This investment can be a big one. The less the resources, the higher the cost.
Since CNC machinery is involved, the program for cutting need to be re-programmed. And sometimes, the tooling system of the machine is also need to be modified. This requires heavy labor power.
The main issue is that the modification of tooling and machine will spend a lot of time, for a factory or a luthier, this surely occupies a heavy production resource. This is the main reason of higher cost.
To help clients to reduce their cost to custom guitar of left-hand, there are some factories like us to remain certain machines for left-hand guitar making.
Is It Worth to Custom Left-hand Guitar?
Well, we should say yes.
However, as mentioned above, the market of left-hand guitars is not as wide as average guitars. Thus, it is better to figure out the situation of your market before putting any order of the customization. And a large quantity of left-hand guitar customization is not always necessary to reduce the cost. Some factories or suppliers can accept the mixed order, so you can also mix some left-hand guitar when you custom average ones. You can CONTACT US to consult about this.
There are advantages of selling left-hand acoustic guitars or classical guitars. Firstly, it is easier to build your own brand since this type of guitar is not so common as regular types. Once you custom acoustic of left-hand with unique design, your brand can be easily identified. Secondly, for the guitars of the same or similar level like solid top, laminated or full solid, left-hand normally makes more benefit when marketing. Thirdly, your clients of left-hand guitars will be extremely loyal to you because it is not so easy to buy the same from others.
Therefore, we think it is worthy to custom guitar of left-hand.