Welcome to my website
What is the purpose of this site? If I wanted to be pretentious, I could describe it as a gallery of my guitar collection on display to allow global appreciation of such things, but actually it's more like one of those sad sites where people put up pictures of their cats, describe how many children they have in their family and the last time they had their nose hair trimmed.

A bit of boring background - I grew up in Christchurch, NZ but now live in Wellington. I left NZ in 1990 to get a bit of OE and try and make some money. I returned 11 years and 20 guitars later having worked in the UK, Ireland, Malaysia, Singapore, Pakistan, Poland, Sweden, Vietnam and spending reasonable amounts of time in eastern Europe and the US. I work as a Retail Banking Solutions Architect.

Since I have started collecting guitars the one thing I have noticed is the lack of availability. Supposedly 8-10% of people are left handed but you won't find anything like that proportion of left handed guitars manufactured. The number of these guitars I have had to custom order gives a strong indication of the lack of quality left handed guitars readily available for retail purchase. Most guitar shops will stock a token left or two - Japanese strats or copies being the most common. It's not surprising that a large number of natural left-handers decide to play right handed.

Having said that, most major guitar manufactures do make some of their models available left-handed - Gibson, Fender, Gretsch, Rickenbacker, PRS (albeit after some time). So why can't you find them? Retailers not wanting slow moving stock seems to be the most obvious answer but who wants to wait 6 months to a year for their guitar to be manufactured? That's enough whining, but if anyone from Parker is out there, it's about time you came to the party.

I would love to hear from anyone who has an interest in guitar collecting, left handed guitars or wants to complain about Swedes. Please note that none of these guitars are for sale so don't bother sending price enquiries. Enjoy the site.

Thomas B. Perry
February 2002

"She Gave Me Water"

This is a quote from the non-Disney 'Hunchback of Notre Dame' movies and is uttered by Laughton, Quinn or Hopkins (depending on which particular movie you are going with) after Esmerelda gives him a drink. Quasimodo was strapped to a wheel at the time. The book is more of a narrative and doesn't actually quote Mr Modo as uttering this statement directly.

What's that got to do with guitars? Absolutely nothing and there is no evidence that Quasimodo was left handed, however I liked the quote so much that I decided to use it. If you want to practice saying it yourself be sure to hold your mouth as if you have just had an injection at the dentist, dragging one foot behind you and slumping over will enhance the effect.