Here's a great picture I took of my brother-out-law Peter playing my Fender Venus, my son Sam playing a pumpkin shaker, a bone shaker and some bells, and my son Arthur playing electronic drums, back in June of 2000. As you can see we have a cool living room where most everything is either red or black. :-)

"If you pick up a guitar and it says, 'Take me, I'm yours,' then that's the one for you." - Frank Zappa

After many years of acoustic guitars, my first electric guitar was a $60-ish "refurbished" Synsonics Strat copy with a built-in speaker. It was cute and fun but definitely not a well-made guitar. I banished it to the garage during a period of guitar inactivity, and when I got it out again the internal speaker was spitting out more static than music. I decided to replace it with a good electric guitar, but which one? -- there were so many kinds, all appealing in their own ways.

Then I saw the Fender Venus (also known as the Fender Squier Venus and the Fender Vista Venus), and knew that was the one for me. A beautiful simple well-made guitar that sounded great and felt perfect. I loved the somewhat harp-shaped (or pregnant-shaped :-)) body that looked kind of like a cross between a Stratocaster and a Rickenbacker, the feel of the neck, that it had both single-coil and humbucking pickups, and that it was designed by a female rocker. Check out Courtney Love's explanation of her design for the Venus in this excerpt from Guitar World Magazine's January 1999 article HOLE TONES: Secrets Of Celebrity Skin's Smooth Sound:

The body shape was based in part on Rickenbacker solidbodies and Mercury guitars - an obscure American brand. The Venus models that Love plays have just one pickup - a single-coil mounted on a slant in the neck position. But production models add a bridge humbucker. "I wanted a guitar that sounded really warm and pop, but which required just one box to go dirty," says Love. "And something that could also be your first band guitar. I didn't want it all teched out. I wanted it real simple, with just one pickup switch. Because I think that cultural revolutions are in the hands of the guitar players."

But the Venus had already been discontinued, so where was I going to get one? A local store had a sunburst model in stock for a lot of money, but I wanted a black one, so I started looking around the net. After a while I found (I think it was via a message in one of the Usenet forsale groups, but I seem not to have saved all my correspondence about it) a guy who used to have a guitar store who still had some new Venuses for sale including one black one. I bought it from him for a good price, on December 11 of 1998 UPS delivered it to my house, and it's been my favorite guitar ever since.

In the living room I use it with a Fender Blues Junior amp (it's a nice basic little tube amp -- see if you can find it in the picture at the top of this page :-)), but most of the time I actually just play it acoustically in my "home office", sitting in front of my computer. This is because I usually practice in the early morning when everyone else in the house is asleep, ala play a little, read a little email, play a little, read a little news, etc. Or sometimes I play it through my computer speakers (I have a guitar cord plugged into my soundcard's microphone port) to play along with MP3s or CDs. And for that matter I just got a "LightSnake" guitar-to-USB cable for it, though I'm not really sure yet what programs would be good to use with it.

I also have a "Beatnik Burgundy" (!) Danelectro HoneyTone mini-amp (of the battery-powered belt-clip variety), but it mainly gets used with the Backpacker on trips, or my iPod in the Cabrillo music lab.

I have a padded Levy's Leathers "hot chili pepper" guitar strap on my Venus, that is very solid and comfortable and looks good too.

*** more later perhaps ***

Fender's own Venus page

Fender took down their Venus page a while after the Venus had been discontinued, but before that I'd saved a copy of it, so here it is:

 

Venus

Co-designed by Courtney Love and the Fender Custom Shop, this fresh new design embodies unique features and delicious tone! Body: Solid basswood. Neck: Maple; 25.5" scale. Fretboard: Bound rosewood w/22 frets. Electronics: HB pickup (bridge), single coil pickup w/staggered Alnico pole pieces (neck), 3-pos toggle, master volume. Pickguard: White shell. Hardware: 6 saddle adjustable bridge with strings through body design, traditional machine heads, all nickel w/chrome plating. (Gig bag included, U.S. & Canada only). (027-1700-xxx) Shown in (x57) Surf Green w/matching painted headstock Also available: (x06) Black w/matching painted headstock

Venus links

First, some general Venus links

Fender's original Summer 1997 news release "Fender Introduces Squier Venus Guitars".

The Venus was part of Fender's "Vista" series of affordable, high-quality guitars made at Fender's now-closed Japanese facility -- take a look at Fender's January 1997 press release introducing the Vista series.

A reader asked about wiring diagrams for the Venus -- when I wrote to Fender about this I got a letter back saying that they didn't have the wiring diagrams, but they did send me faxes of the parts lists for the Venus and Venus XII.

Matt Kemp's old Vista Series E-zine site seems to have been reborn as a message board. Unfortunately it's been hit pretty hard by offensive spammers, but you can still (once you scroll down past the offensive spam) read and post Venus info and questions in the Venus Owners forum.

intermusic.com's Venus review goes into a lot of technical detail. And for some reason the same article is also on the Total Guitar Magazine site.

Here's a nice Venus review by Jeff Hendricks.

Harmony Central has three pages of enthusiastic Venus user reviews: one page with two reviews, another containing nineteen reviews, and also a page reviewing the Venus XII (the 12-string version of the Venus).

Guitar Magazine's Venus XII review "Doin' That 12-String Thing".

Wikipedia's Venus page. Also note their page on Venus co-designers the Fender Custom Shop.

Click here to see the page on the Venus and the other Vista-series models in the book The Fender Book: A Complete History of Fender Electric Guitars (2nd Ed) by Tony Bacon and Paul Day.

If you're looking for a Venus to buy, probably your best bet is to check eBay, which usually seems to have one or more up for auction at any given time -- click here to see if they have any right now.

Fender recommends their Jazzmaster/Jaguar hardshell cases for the Venus -- here you can see a brown one and here's a black one.

And some Courtney Love-related Venus links

Guitar World's January 1999 article HOLE TONES: Secrets Of Celebrity Skin's Smooth Sound includes Courtney Love's explanation of her design for the Venus, quoted earlier in this page.

Courtney Love had some custom or prototype Venus guitars in non-standard colors like pink, powder blue, and white, but the pictures I used to link to featuring her playing one or another of them seem to be no longer online. Here are some pictures of her playing a black Venus, though: from Hole's own "Kittyradio" site, at the 1999 Glastonbury Festival, the 1999 EdgeFest in Winnipeg, and some SF-Bay-area show. And here are some pictures of her playing a green Venus: one, two, three.

According to a Fender Discussion Page posting by "Blazer":

Courtney's most well known Venus, the baby blue one with the Black pickguard was indeed a Fender custom shop one off. It differed from the Squier version by having a set neck.

But she also used a black Squier Venus (with a replaced Fender branded neck, because she likes to toss her guitars around a lot the Squier neck got damaged) a white Squier Venus, a sunburst Twelve string Venus and (as also used in the video for "Celebrity skin") a Pink Venus which was rather crudely modified with purple lipstick having the word "Dork" written on the upper part of its body.

"Drown Soda"'s Vista Venus page includes pictures of Courtney Love playing various Venus guitars.

BTW, if you wound up on this page because you're a Courtney Love fan, check out her Salon article "Courtney Love does the math", billed as "The controversial singer takes on record label profits, Napster and "sucka VCs."

BTW again, I just (10/28/04) saw Courtney Love in concert here in Santa Cruz, but darnitall, she didn't play guitar at all during the show, only sang.

Links to some other Venus players

Billy Maguire of paco's virus

Caroline of Bild Lili

Claire Ingram of Ikara Colt (hey, their web site even has a drawing of a Venus in the Flash intro)

Crispian Mills, who even appeared in an ad for the Venus XII

Chicago/Austin experimental music duo Donny Who Loved Bowling has two Venus guitars, one of which you can see on their picture page.

Fiona of Trouble Girl

Heather Matarazzo

Jenny of tuuli

Jenny Lukasik of The Cherry Blasters

Joe Griffin

Judith Gruber of Austrian "family pop rock band" Security

Laura Schreck

Lizzy of Angel Bitch

Matt Kemp who does the Vista Series E-zine

Melissa Ivey

Mike Favila of temporary basement

Mike Keane

Nick Fasulo of Trunk

Rachel Leyco

Scott Patalano of Mistle Thrush

Tom Rhoads of Broadside Electric

Uptight

More later ... send me mail if you're a Venus player and would like me to add you to the above list.

And a few more things ...

For what it's worth, click here to see listings for some guitar books that include information about the Venus. (Note -- these books are definitely not about the Venus -- they're just general guitar books that mention the Venus along with many other guitars.)

I just had to mention a different kind of Fender Venus :-) -- tennis champion Venus Williams plays a '57 Strat. Take a look at this tiny picture of Venus accompanied by sister Serena on drums and this large scan of her playing guitar in a Lady Foot Locker ad.

Daisy Rock also has an electric guitar model called the Venus, as part of their series of guitars designed with young girls in mind. Check it out ...

And Stellar Guitars' line of astronomically-named electric guitars includes five different "Venus" models.

And "US Blues" also has a Venus series of electric guitars -- what can I say, it seems to be a popular name!

Ok, so this is really stretching it, but still ... Luna Guitars' "Diana" series of acoustic/electic guitars and basses are available in "Venus Pink".

Copyright © 2000-2007 Tané Tachyon
Last updated March 16, 2007
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