My five year old granddaughter is a lefty. I have taken care of her (and her sister) since shortly after she was born while her folks work, so we have a lot of time together. She has always enjoyed beating on my mandolin and pretending to play it but recently she has actually started fretting it and is very excited about being able to change the note she is playing. Earlier on it didn't seem to matter to her which way she held it, but again lately she is consistently playing left handed. So I did what any forward thinking mandolin playing grandpa would do, I took one of my old A model mandolins and switched the strings around, and for now I also took off half of the strings. I did not make a new bridge saddle for it, I'll wait and see just how interested she really is. I did shift the bridge to adjust the intonation as best I could for now. Monday when I get this new mandolin to her we'll see how it goes. She's a pretty strong minded young lady so I'm not even going to try to guess her response, could be love it, hate it, or anywhere in between. If she does like it, I think that I'm going to be in trouble though trying to visualize what's going on in the left handed world as a life long righty. Maybe mirrors?
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