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PostPosted: Thu May 04, 2023 8:43 am 
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Mahogany
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Some help needed here!

Working in an 17” left handed archtop, I have doutbs for select the floating pickup. I like the Benedetto, but I think is calibrated for right hand players, so I’m inclined to a pickup with adjustable poles.

In the other hand, mini tone and volume controls are for right handed so I wonder if I would have problems using these lenf handed.

I like too the Stealth Control Kit available in archtop.com. Any experience used in a lefty guitar?

Thank you very much for reading and for any help.


Last edited by Juan CAR on Thu May 04, 2023 10:37 am, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: Thu May 04, 2023 9:06 am 
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Koa
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First name: Bob
Last Name: Gramann
City: Fredericksburg
State: VA
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Country: USA
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If it actually makes a difference, turn the pickup 180 degrees.


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PostPosted: Thu May 04, 2023 10:44 am 
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Mahogany
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bobgramann wrote:
If it actually makes a difference, turn the pickup 180 degrees.

Sorry, I forget to write that will be a “floating” pickup, and in this model is not possible turn the pickup because is not symmetrical


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PostPosted: Thu May 04, 2023 10:49 am 
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Walnut
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Yeah, lefty stuff can turn your head around!

About the pickups: Archtop pickups basically have three mounting configurations. A pickup ring mounted to the body, a bracket on the right side of the pickup to mount it to the pick guard, or a U-shaped bracket to attach it to the end of the neck. If you have any doubt that the pickup is functionally (electromagnetically) symmetrical side to side, you can rotate a pickup in a ring 180 deg; the pick guard mounted pickup will *have* to be rotated 180 deg. because the pick guard for a lefty is on the left side; and you can't rotate the type of pickups with the U-shaped mounting bracket at all. Note BTW about the beautiful Benedetto pickup: Bob's signature will be upside down if it is used on a lefty instrument. But they may have (or may be willing to make for you) a lefty version. You may want to contact them.

About the control pots: Lefty audio taper pots are available, but for the life of me I never understood why. When a right handed person turns up the volume on the amp, they turn the knob clockwise. But when a left handed person turns up the volume they turn it clockwise as well. I never use lefty pots and have never been asked to install them.

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PostPosted: Thu May 04, 2023 2:55 pm 
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Mahogany
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rmmottola wrote:
Yeah, lefty stuff can turn your head around!

About the pickups: Archtop pickups basically have three mounting configurations. A pickup ring mounted to the body, a bracket on the right side of the pickup to mount it to the pick guard, or a U-shaped bracket to attach it to the end of the neck. If you have any doubt that the pickup is functionally (electromagnetically) symmetrical side to side, you can rotate a pickup in a ring 180 deg; the pick guard mounted pickup will *have* to be rotated 180 deg. because the pick guard for a lefty is on the left side; and you can't rotate the type of pickups with the U-shaped mounting bracket at all. Note BTW about the beautiful Benedetto pickup: Bob's signature will be upside down if it is used on a lefty instrument. But they may have (or may be willing to make for you) a lefty version. You may want to contact them.

About the control pots: Lefty audio taper pots are available, but for the life of me I never understood why. When a right handed person turns up the volume on the amp, they turn the knob clockwise. But when a left handed person turns up the volume they turn it clockwise as well. I never use lefty pots and have never been asked to install them.

Thank you very much for your kind information, you are very clarifying, and I have taken some good ideas from it. I'm going to write to a couple of pickup manufacturers to see if they have left-handed models available.

I wonder about the advantages of the pickups that are attached to the neck, I suppose they have better stability than those that are attached to the pickguard, I still have to decide between one of these two options.

As for the potentiometers, I think they have a logarithmic travel, and that the right-handed potentiometers, when used by lefties, go from zero to a very high volume with very little travel, but I’m not shure.


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PostPosted: Thu May 04, 2023 3:19 pm 
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First name: Chris
Last Name: Pile
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If you choose pickups with bar magnets or polepieces, there is no lefty / righty issue. I usually recommend Bill Lawrence. They are clean sounding, dead quiet, and their tone profile is high on clarity and definition. Also, they are affordable.
http://leonardgriffie.com/gear/lawrencea400b.jpg

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PostPosted: Thu May 04, 2023 5:24 pm 
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Mahogany
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Chris Pile wrote:
If you choose pickups with bar magnets or polepieces, there is no lefty / righty issue. I usually recommend Bill Lawrence. They are clean sounding, dead quiet, and their tone profile is high on clarity and definition. Also, they are affordable.
http://leonardgriffie.com/gear/lawrencea400b.jpg

Thank you very much. I will look this Bill Lawrence.


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PostPosted: Thu May 04, 2023 7:30 pm 
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Koa
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First name: Josh
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rmmottola wrote:

Lefty audio taper pots are available, but for the life of me I never understood why. When a right handed person turns up the volume on the amp, they turn the knob clockwise. But when a left handed person turns up the volume they turn it clockwise as well. I never use lefty pots and have never been asked to install them.


As a left-handed guitarist and a “both-handed” :D guitar repairman, I can shed some light here. It’s about the direction of a travel relative to the orientation of the device in question. Forget amps, you don’t hug an amp on your lap while adjusting it, you stand in front of it, and amps do not have “handedness”.

But guitars do and so it helps to think as if you are the player, not a third-party looking at a device from the front.

From a player-perspective, a standard vol pot on a right-handed strat is actuated to increase volume by rotating the player’s right wrist “overhand” from the guitar’s tail towards the neck. The pot turns clockwise as viewed by a third-party watching the player.

Fitting this pot to a lefty strat will cause it to work backwards from the perspective of the lefty player - their left wrist must now turn “underhand” from the guitar’s tail to neck to increase volume.

Because the rest of the lefty instrument is a mirror image of the right-handed guitar, but the RH potentiometer is not, this is jarring and non-intuitive for the player. A LH taper pot restores “correct” functionality, turning “overhand” from tail to neck to increase volume. The third-party watching the player would note the LH pot turns counter-wise (eg in reverse) but to the player it is going the “right way”.

Another (briefer) way to say all of that is - don’t think of the lefty the guitar as an “upside down” righty guitar. Think of it as a mirror image.

Many large manufacturers do use LH pots on factory LH guitars and lefty players who have always purchased lefty guitars grow used to this mode of operation.

Now, there are some players who learned on upside-down righty guitars, Hendrix-style, who may have grown used to conventional RH pots, but these players are less common now than a few decades ago due to increasing access to factory lefty guitars with lefty pots.

I recently rewired a brand-new $$$$$ lefty archtop built by a luthier well-known in the archtop world. It was a superb instrument but came with four righty pots. The owner was pretty grumpy at needing to immediately rewire an instrument that he’d just paid north of $15k for and viewed this as a lapse in attention to detail by the builder. It certainly didn’t make the “custom build” feel very customised for him.

I encourage everyone to give your lefty customers the gift of a guitar that functions intuitively. I have owned, played and worked on many, many lefties in my life as a player and luthier and understanding this issue from both a player and luthier perspective.

I’m telling you, RH pots in a lefty guitar is an annoyance equivalent to having the pickup selector switch wired backwards, so that the “forward” position selects the rear pickup. Very frustrating but many lefties learn to just put up with it due to manufacturers and repair shops not understanding why LH pots should be used.

Put controls that function “correctly” on a lefty’s favourite axe and they usually can’t wipe the smile off their face for a week. You’ll have a customer for life.

At the least, please have a quick conversation with the lefty customer to determine what orientation they prefer or use on their other instruments before doing any wiring.



These users thanked the author joshnothing for the post: Chris Pile (Fri May 05, 2023 12:05 am)
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PostPosted: Fri May 05, 2023 12:47 am 
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Mahogany
Mahogany
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Joined: Sat Apr 10, 2021 3:44 pm
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joshnothing wrote:
rmmottola wrote:

Lefty audio taper pots are available, but for the life of me I never understood why. When a right handed person turns up the volume on the amp, they turn the knob clockwise. But when a left handed person turns up the volume they turn it clockwise as well. I never use lefty pots and have never been asked to install them.


As a left-handed guitarist and a “both-handed” :D guitar repairman, I can shed some light here. It’s about the direction of a travel relative to the orientation of the device in question. Forget amps, you don’t hug an amp on your lap while adjusting it, you stand in front of it, and amps do not have “handedness”.

But guitars do and so it helps to think as if you are the player, not a third-party looking at a device from the front.

From a player-perspective, a standard vol pot on a right-handed strat is actuated to increase volume by rotating the player’s right wrist “overhand” from the guitar’s tail towards the neck. The pot turns clockwise as viewed by a third-party watching the player.

Fitting this pot to a lefty strat will cause it to work backwards from the perspective of the lefty player - their left wrist must now turn “underhand” from the guitar’s tail to neck to increase volume.

Because the rest of the lefty instrument is a mirror image of the right-handed guitar, but the RH potentiometer is not, this is jarring and non-intuitive for the player. A LH taper pot restores “correct” functionality, turning “overhand” from tail to neck to increase volume. The third-party watching the player would note the LH pot turns counter-wise (eg in reverse) but to the player it is going the “right way”.

Another (briefer) way to say all of that is - don’t think of the lefty the guitar as an “upside down” righty guitar. Think of it as a mirror image.

Many large manufacturers do use LH pots on factory LH guitars and lefty players who have always purchased lefty guitars grow used to this mode of operation.

Now, there are some players who learned on upside-down righty guitars, Hendrix-style, who may have grown used to conventional RH pots, but these players are less common now than a few decades ago due to increasing access to factory lefty guitars with lefty pots.

I recently rewired a brand-new $$$$$ lefty archtop built by a luthier well-known in the archtop world. It was a superb instrument but came with four righty pots. The owner was pretty grumpy at needing to immediately rewire an instrument that he’d just paid north of $15k for and viewed this as a lapse in attention to detail by the builder. It certainly didn’t make the “custom build” feel very customised for him.

I encourage everyone to give your lefty customers the gift of a guitar that functions intuitively. I have owned, played and worked on many, many lefties in my life as a player and luthier and understanding this issue from both a player and luthier perspective.

I’m telling you, RH pots in a lefty guitar is an annoyance equivalent to having the pickup selector switch wired backwards, so that the “forward” position selects the rear pickup. Very frustrating but many lefties learn to just put up with it due to manufacturers and repair shops not understanding why LH pots should be used.

Put controls that function “correctly” on a lefty’s favourite axe and they usually can’t wipe the smile off their face for a week. You’ll have a customer for life.

At the least, please have a quick conversation with the lefty customer to determine what orientation they prefer or use on their other instruments before doing any wiring.

Thank you for to share tour experience. I’m too a left handed guitarist (and amateur luthier) but I come from the classical guitar and hace low experience wirh electronics. I have a lefty Godin 5th avenue with pors that increase de vol and tone rotating to the neck.

Please, could you inform me if you know a brand who makes left handed mini pots? For fix in a pockguard. Thank you!


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PostPosted: Sat May 06, 2023 11:56 pm 
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Koa
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Joined: Tue Jan 15, 2013 10:00 pm
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First name: Josh
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Status: Amateur
When I’m looking for something unusual I call the largest supplier of electronics componentry in my country and see if they can help. Not sure where you are located so can’t tell you who to call specifically.

Im talking here about a company that supplies components to industry, not some retail business that sells the usual range of marked-up CTS pots to home partscaster builders.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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PostPosted: Wed May 10, 2023 12:10 am 
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Mahogany
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Joined: Sat Apr 10, 2021 3:44 pm
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joshnothing wrote:
When I’m looking for something unusual I call the largest supplier of electronics componentry in my country and see if they can help. Not sure where you are located so can’t tell you who to call specifically.

Im talking here about a company that supplies components to industry, not some retail business that sells the usual range of marked-up CTS pots to home partscaster builders.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thank you very much. I wrote to a supplir who solved my needs. The have left hand pots and its pickups are suitable for left handeds.


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