Well, you know I had to do it. 
And I had delightful and very satisfying conversations about left-handed Gretsches with both Fred Gretsch and Joe Carducci at the Gretsch Roundup in Nashville last weekend.
Among the keeper comments from them, and what I inferred...
Off the top of his head, Mr. Gretsch told me that left-handed players comprise about 5% of the guitar market. That's a figure we might guess. We lefties know that we comprise 10% of the general population. We also know that some natural lefties learn to play right-handed. And I, for one, suspect that lefties (irrespective of which hand-orientation they employ to play guitar) comprise less than 10% of the guitar-playing population, because our backwards wiring makes it look harder when we see righties playing. Just a guess, mind you...
I complimented Mr. Gretsch on the company's long-standing broad lefty selection, dating back to the early '90's resurrection, and he replied that it was always the intention to make lefties available, that there were just a lot of good left-handed players out there that they wanted to reach. That sounded like a "right thing to do" decision, which I must say I appreciate quite a lot.
He and I also talked about Southpaw Guitars in Houston, and the existence of other lefty specialty stores. I didn't think to mention the one in Japan that Joe visited last year and DHR Music in Cincinnati (which loves Gibsons and has fuggedaboutit prices), but I did mention one shop in Florida that I see auctioning stuff (not Gretsches) on eBay occasionally.
When I talked to Joe, he told me that left-handed model decisions are generally guided by what's selling strongly on the righty side. Since overall lefty sales-volume considerations require some selectivity as to what's offered, that's as useful a standard as any, right?
A certain former Gretsch endorser and lefty advocate still makes occasional pitches to Joe.
And I made mine! If you'll look elsewhere on the "Chopping Block" thread, you'll see that some trimming of the line is imminent. I didn't even ask about that (oops, sorry!), but the tenor of our conversation was all about positive moves forward with lefties.
I made three recommendations, and Joe was positively predisposed toward them, since they each addressed small (but in two instances, important) gaps in what we lefties have to choose from.
Now, I know that one of the things that we lefties love to complain about is the so-called "upcharge" for instruments built for us. We're all big boys and girls, though, and I think we recognize that any tooling that must be constructed (I once heard, some years ago, that the body forms cost $20,000 each) or resetting of jigs or what-have-you to build an instrument are costs that have to be amortized, and our little old 5% market share means we got a lot of amortizing to do with 1/20th of the guitar sales. I think that it's a non-starter to expect righty versions to share that expense. I'll take the wild guess that there is little or no will to add unnecessarily to every guitar's bottom line for us lefties' benefit.
I also think the more expensive the likely tooling cost, the less likely it is to be given the go-ahead to be built, given our population's small size and the higher risk of not recovering investment if a model sells poorly.
So, all of my recommendations were made with an eye toward minimal tooling costs -- no special new lefty body forms required, for starters. This was definitely part of my pitch to Joe.
What did I recommend? Well, I don't want to stick my neck out publicly, and I don't want to put anyone (like Joe) on the spot. They're not radical suggestions -- they all have right-handed counterparts. I hope one or two do see the light of day; and I hope favorable production scenarios and costs are realized and are reflected in the MSRPs.
During a conversation regarding the Billy Zoom model, I asked Joe to not offer it left-handed. This was to cover the reverse-psychology base, of course.
FF909
