About Me

Hi, my name is Jim Schaffer.  I am left-handed and live in Bakersfield, CA.  I have been building ukuleles for the last twelve years and have taught about 500 junior high students to build Pineapple ukuleles.  This year, I’m retiring from teaching and will put my efforts into building left-handed guitars and ukuleles.  My family owns a lumber yard in Northern California. 

In my early life and as a young adult, I learned all about wood grades and the different types of wood and their properties.  For the last twenty-eight years, I have been an Industrial Arts Teacher in Bakersfield. 

When I was sixteen, I had enough money to buy a steel-string left-handed guitar.  I went to Fresno to the largest music company to try the different guitars.  The guitars were all right-handed.  I had to select from those and have a guitar specially ordered.  I bought a Takanime, and it took four months to get it.  It was and is a good guitar. But I always wished I could go into a store and play a bunch of left-hand guitars and pick the best one.  There is only one left-handed guitar store in the U.S., which is located in Texas.  You can buy one online, but you don’t know how it feels in your hand or how it sounds to your ear. My Company, SouthPaw SoundWaves Guitar and Ukulele Co. will try to have at least five guitars that a lefty could play and pick the best one for themselves.

This fall, I have two left-hand dreadnought guitars available for sale.  Each one of my guitars will have its own signature fretboard and rossett, making each guitar unique.  I will set up appointments in Bakersfield and travel the Pacific coast states, selling my guitars from my Airstream Trailer.  The acoustics inside an Airstream are great.  For left-hand guitarists and ukulele players, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

MY GUITARS

I have built enough guitars to know that you can’t always depend on your ear to decide the correct thickness of a guitar top or back.  This is why each top and back will be sonically analyzed using an oscilloscope and mathematical formulas to determine the optimum thickness.  Intonation is another problem that guitar builders sometimes gloss over.  My guitars will have a nut that is offset for each string and a split saddle for the “B” string, along with a modified fretboard to make the intonation at all frets as best as possible.