Ukulele Set Up for Left Handed Ukulele Players…

Q: When you talk about how to play left handed what do you mean by needing to change bridge and neck? Could my local instrument shop do that for me? Also i read somewhere else about need to fix the nuts also? Im confused and just want to know how to fix this so that i can go about playing my uke as quickly as possible. [sic]

A: Since most of this blog is aimed at beginner ukulele players, I’ve never talked about changing the bridge and neck before, but since you ask: If your local instrument shop has a decent luthier there, they could easily take care of this relatively cheaply for you. Or, you could do it yourself. Music shop prices vary from location to location and from the date I write this. I’m a ukulele teacher not a luthier, so it’s probably best that you ask them for more information about their services and prices.

If you just want to get playing, and you want the simplest way to set up your ukulele to play left handed quickly, I recommend changing the middle 2 strings around, as recommended in this post. If you want to know how to change your strings, please see this video. If you’re new to the ukulele, this should be sufficient to get you strumming for now. Later on, when you’ve spent quite a bit of money on a top-notch ukulele, then you might want to take it to a music shop or change the set up yourself, but I reckon to get you started, you’ll be fine just switching the strings around. I’ve seen many people do just that and stick with that same uke with great results for years.

Read the pros and cons of playing right vs left here.

Grab yourself a left handed chord chart from here.

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