And young people, who have the attention span of my dog apparently.
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The biggest (an only) problem for me as an old lefty with the right basses is chugging. Even after more than one year of practice my left hand is faster.
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Thanks for the reminder - I will be extra nice to my girlfriend now 
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Years ago someone tipped me off about this yard sale happening the next morning in Malibu I picked up 3 Armani suits and pants for $125 each set(even back then it’s was ($1500) a set. The guy cheated on his girlfriend with one of her friends. I wish I brought more than a grand with me. It was like a fire sale. 
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Good thing I only have suits from small French designers
(Un)fortunately none of my girlfriend’s friends are my type.
She might be mad if I use powertools (or even a dremel) in the kitchen though. Or buy more nonsense.
Gotta be careful!
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Sounds good on the surface, but unlikely since it would mean most guitar and bass players are playing the wrong orientation…in a Rex Brown lesson I watched (Pantera bassist) he said he thinks the plucking/picking hand is most important as that is where the rhythm (and dynamic expression) occurs, and I tend to agree with this view
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Ironically I am working on a 180bpm song right now and I cannot argue with this. I keep tripping up the picking and I end up dragging like a swing note on string change. It’s maddening. Meanwhile fretting is going fine.
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So… pretty much the entire article can almost be summed up in one sentence:
“Forget everything you’ve heard, buy the bass with a reputable name from a reputable source that feels and looks good to you.”
I like it!
My only critique is this: I was a Radio Shack employee and store manager for years. While lots of Radio Shack stuff was… questionable, the cables were spot on. How dare you malign Radio Shack cables. 
(Fully tongue-in-cheek.)
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So if the plucking / picking hand is most important. All the right handers out there have chosen the correct orientation?
I have no idea. I’m left handed and have dealt with a right hand world for 53 years. I’m done fighting it. I give in 
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In theory, yes
In England Radio Shack was called Tandy, and they had a saying regarding anything of dubious quality, “It’s a Tandy” 
My thought on Radio Shack is a lot won’t get it these days
Sad, too. I spent a lot of time in them playing with TRS-80’s before getting my first computer. In a way they were an early influence towards my career.
Tandy was Radio Shack’s parent company. Started out as Tandy Leather way back in the day. And all the early Radio Shack computers - before they were out and out called Tandy - were TRS-80s, which stood for “Tandy Radio Shack”.
I still have my 2-year Tandy Corporation service pin around here somewhere.
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I absolutely agree.
When I was sixteen, after having learned to play rhythm guitar for two years, I lost all four fingertips of my left hand in an industrial accident. As a righty, I always fretted chords with my left hand, so I was in a quandary about how to ever play again.
By way of background, rhythm and keeping time always came naturally to me by some quirk of birth. I was playing my mom’s pots and pans as a drum set since I was old enough to sit up. All this to say that playing rhythm guitar requires a player’s picking hand to strum in a syncopated manner, often polyrhythically.
That said, by the time of my accident, I had already developed a solid strumming hand, but I figured I couldn’t fret chords any more with my diminished left hand fingers. So I thought I’d reverse the guitar and play lefty.
That just didn’t work for me. Fretting with my right hand felt undoably weird. But far worse than that was my pitiful lack of coordination and rhythmic ability with my new “strumming” hand.
So I just tried frettting with my newly acquired left hand, instead. It hurt like hell itself, but I mastered it over time, going on to play alone, in jams, and in bands throughout many years.
This might be a totally unique case that doesn’t apply to the whole lefty-plays-righty thing, but I just couldn’t do it. It would have meant giving up my natural rhythmic right hand, and that was unacceptable to me.
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Wow Mike that’s a hell of a story. Good on you for keeping with it.
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Thanks, man.
God knows I’ve lived a hell of a lot longer without my fingertips than I ever did with them.
Even though I’ve gone on to learn to play several other instruments since I was sixteen, not a day goes by that I don’t wish I could go back in time and not be a stupid fucking kid for the literal second it took me to lose those damn things.
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That’s awesome man.
When you are a beginner left hand is more difficult but most of the advanced stuffs are in the right (plugging) hand, all be speed, ghost yes all levels of ghost notes. There’s only so much and so many ways you can do with the fretting hands but you’d never stopped discovering new things you can do with the right hand.
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I think all these replies about playing left-handed just goes to show, ultimately you’ve gotta listen to your body and do what you feel is right for you personally no matter what people on the internet are saying.
I thought fretting with my left hand would feel super weird and out of place, especially since I had past experience with right-hand fretting (even if it was two decades ago). But it only felt super weird for a couple of days, and I quickly got used to it. The bit of picking and slap that I’ve tried so far has also started to fall into place without feeling like I’m forcing it. Maybe I’m a little more ambidextrous than I give myself credit for? Who knows.
Ultimately we’re all different, and left-handed basses do exist for a reason. But personally I’m glad I tried playing righty.
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You might well be. I’m cross hand dominant; so I use different hands for different things. It’s more common in left handed people.
Write with my left hand, throw with my right.
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nothing to add, great damn article @Gio
when i bought my first one, I used Josh’s guide.
Some internet guidance can be good, if it’s Josh I suppose, lol
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