OK you musicians. We were discussing left-handed guitars in another topic & I realised that, apart from drum kits, I've never seen other musical instruments played left-handed. For example, you wouldn't expect to see a left-handed piano or keyboard although if you really wanted one I expect you could get one made for you. I don't think they make left-handed wind instruments like clarinets, flutes, saxophones, oboes. What about other stringed instruments like the Violin, Cello etc? Why would the guitar be any different?

Answers on a ten pound note to the usual address.

Hmmm, a most interesting question.

As an accomplished guitarist and fairly advanced keyboardist and former guitar teacher (and a left hander when writing only), here's my take on this:

Because the guitar, like drums, can be easily physically inverted.

Beginning guitarists in reality cannot play either way, but some choose to hold it left handed because somehow that feels more natural to them.  In absence of a teacher who might catch this at the beginning, at least for the sake of convenience (for ex., chord charts are right handed), they just start out that way.

Wind instruments don't really have a handedness, you just accept them and learn from the get-go (altho in theory a transverse flute could be designed left-handed).

Stringed instruments, well, you're gonna get a bow across your butt if you try to tell your instructor, "I wanna do it left-handed."  Never heard of left-handed violins, etc.  It is possible, of course, but they're really just conventional/traditional, and that's it. 

So, orchestral instruments are pretty much set in stone.  They just don't make 'em lefty.  You gotta learn rightie.

And then there's the clavier, or as we know it, the keyboard.  It's traditional layout from bass (left) to treble (right) is immutable, and even hard to imagine reversed.   That's the way early claviers were done, and that's the way it will, and even must, always be.  It has to do with the Western concept of reading text from left to right, hence the notes "should" get higher also in the same direction.  And all classical keyboard music is fingered with that in mind.  It also has to do with technique, altho I can't explain that, even to myself, and certainly the learning process, all keyboards are rightie, as are learning books and methods, etc.  In reality, a left handed piano could work, but ya really don't wanna go there. 

So, learning to play a given instrument has a lot to do with it.  You can learn on a left handed guitar or set of drums, but traditional learning methods on other instruments are set in stone.

Footnote: Keith Emerson may have been able to play his keyboard backwards (also in 'Amadeus' there's a scene with young Mozart doing the same trick), but the keyboard they played on was conventional.  The performer is facing outward and his hands are reversed backwards, so the left hand is still playing the bass notes, and the right hand still playing the treble notes.

Burger King Introduces Left-Handed Whopper

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