Restring your Acoustic to Make a Cheap Left Handed Guitar

I had a Tanglewood acoustic guitar for my birthday a while back. Of course, it was a right-handed guitar. I tried to learn the chords upside down at first. Chords A, E and D were manageable, but when it got to F and B, I had no choice but to restring the guitar so that the strings were upside down and I could play it left handed.

Restringing a Guitar for Left Handed Guitar Playing

Left Handed Guitar Strumming

Left handed guitars are quite costly and do not match the choice available for right handed guitarists. As my acoustic guitar is symmetrical in shape (that is, it does not have a cutaway), I could rest the guitar on my lap in reverse. And so, I decided to restring my guitar so that the base E remains at the top when I am strumming it left handedly. Of course, this posed the extra problem of reading guitar chords in reverse, but this is covered in another article.

Tips for Left Handed Guitarists

Tools required for restringing a guitar are: small pliers, a mallet, a soft rag and a thin blade.

Removing Guitar Strings

Have a large, flat surface to hand before restringing your guitar. Firstly, I removed the strings. To do this, I loosened the strings via the turning pegs (at the head of the fretboard). The resultant slack allowed me to unthread the strings and tweeze them out of the holes. Do this one string at a time, or the wires could get confused.

Once the string has been unthreaded, use the pliers to remove the plug, found on the bridge, near the base of the guitar.

Repeat this process for the other five strings and lay them out on a flat surface in reverse order. Notice the slots on the bridge of the guitar have different widths, to correspond with the width of each string, from thick to thin (or base to treble).

The Bridge of the Guitar

Widen the Slots on the Guitar Bridge

The slot intended for the treble string will be too narrow for the base string to slot inside, so it may be necessary to widen this and the neighboring slot, otherwise the base strings will slide over the bridge. I teased a wider slot by inserting a narrow blade and worrying it about. (Don’t do this if your guitar is a valuable collectable). In my case, not tampering with my guitar will simply result in a guitar collecting dust in the cupboard.

Left Handed Guitar Restrung

Now it is time to arrange the strings in reverse order. I began with the

Inserting Guitar Pins

thinnest string (high E) and rested the bottom of the string over the holes on the bridge intended for the thickest string. Push the plug into the hole, snagging the string with it. Push the plug as far as it will go. Then place a piece of cloth over the head of the pin and give the head a few taps with a mallet or similar, to get it into the hole. Feed the string towards the head and thread it through the bottom left turning peg (as shown in the image). Turn the peg until the string is reasonably taut. There is no need to tune the string at this point.

Help for Left Handed Guitarists

Repeat for the next treble string. Push the end into the neighboring hole in the bridge then push the pin over it, snagging the string. Gently tap into place as described, but this time, feed the string into the middle left turning peg. 

Base E to Treble E Strings

Repeat for the other four strings. As each progressively thicker string is snagged into the hole of each pin, thread into the turning peg in the following order:  upper left, upper right, middle right, finishing off with the thickest (base E string) in the bottom right (see image below). Feed each string into the turning peg from the inner hole and turn until all strings are reasonably taut. The strings can then be tuned (covered in another article).

Cheap Left Handed Guitar

Let handed guitars may not be as widely available as right handed guitars and can be costly. I chose to restring my right handed guitar so that the strings are in reverse order. This made possible playing the guitar left handedly without the expense or fuss. The bridge of the guitar may need minor tampering regarding the width of the slots, but my ear detects no difference in sound.

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