NGD - Squier Vista Venus Guitar

BearBoy · Post by **BearBoy** » Mon Aug 20, 2012 4:27 pm

Sweet guitar Taylornutt. I picked up a black Venus XII a few weeks back and it is a lovely guitar.

Now keeping my eyes open for a sea foam green 6 string

Fortunately they don't seem to come up for sale too often in the UK...

ekwatts · Post by **ekwatts** » Mon Aug 20, 2012 5:12 pm

theshadowofseattle wrote:
ekwatts wrote:
HNB wrote:Her best work in Hole (in my opinion) had help from the Nirvana crew.
Classic. And wrong.

I'm going to skip to the end here; Courtney hate tends to come from the very worst type of misogyny there is: the denialists. "I love women! I just reserve special hatred for Courtney Love doing all those things I turn a blind eye to my favourite male rockstars doing!"

They couldn't make anymore Mercury guitars because they were a bunch of dumb asshole kids who fucked up a half-decent operation. Absolutely nothing wrong with that at all. But what were Fender/Squier going to do, say Courtney Love designed the custom guitar she had made for her or print on the adverts that it was made by a bunch of stoners who destroyed a nice big farmhouse with sparkler bombs?

UHHHHHH.

If they ever wanted to start building the guitar again then they could. Nobody has really stolen anything from them apart from an almost completely unattributable credit to a bunch of random guys who built a guitar Love (and Cobain) liked and wanted more of. I seriously doubt Love took the guitar to Fender and said "HAI GUYS I BUILT A GUITAR LOLOLOLOL"

THIS.

Also, is the guy quoted above confusing Crispin Mills of Kula Shaker with Radiohead? Coz that's instant cunt points right there.

HNB · Post by **HNB** » Mon Aug 20, 2012 5:16 pm

So Kurt did not sing backup on several songs on "Live Through This?" Courtney says he did and that he was of course in studio with her when it was being made. Her being with him had no influence at all in her sound?

Either way, I liked Holes stuff so I am not trying to knock the band. I just think it is strange that Pretty on the Inside (which I like) has a feel to it and that Live Through This has more of a Nirvana feel to it.

I also do think it is wrong to pass off another's design as your own. I don't care if the original designers were stoner farm boys or whatever. They designed the guitar and it gets released saying designed by Courtney Love and the Fender Custom Shop. If that is totally fine to you all then I think the best thing is to agree to disagree, but I feel there is a difference between developed for Courtney Love and designed BY Courtney Love.

My thoughts on her having help and influence from her husband was formed more from that blatent theft of design more than her having a vagina. I think credit where it is due is important.

But I will stop posting in this thread. It is supposed to be about the Venus, so I will just leave it at that.

ekwatts · Post by **ekwatts** » Mon Aug 20, 2012 5:42 pm

And as I said, the credit is fairly unattributable at the point the guitar came out. She wanted more of them, the original creators could not provide them, she went to Fender and they changed the headstock; at that point, as far as copyright law for guitars is concerned, the design became theirs and Fender (who put the adverts out, not Courtney Love who just got free guitars out of the deal) could print anything they liked on the adverts.

I do believe in people being credited where necessary and where possible, but in this case it feels like a bunch of Cobain cock-worshippers yet again finding any old shit-covered stick to beat her with because she once got to sit on their heroes penis and make babby. This guitar isn't a Mercury or a sausage on a stick. It's a Squier Venus, a guitar now indelibly associated with Courtney Love. The one she originally played was a Mercury and was built by some dude who now posts on Offset Guitars (fuckoffsetguitars). As for Live Through This, it sounded like many other records around at the time. The fact that Cobain sang on some tracks never really registers much to me as he was mostly just hanging out after the material had been written and mostly recorded. One of the biggest differences between the first and second record was production; listen to Bleach and Nevermind and there's an almost identical difference, in spite of Cobain and Love not having been an item for most of that period. Attributing that enormous difference in production values to Cobain and Nirvana being in some way marginally involved in the production and recording of Live Through This is lazy Courtney-bashing, even if you don't realise it.

We've had a few Venus threads recently that haven't followed the same old shitty pattern; Something Courtney Love related > Cool! > But Courtney is a bitch and here is some contrived reason > Locked and deleted thread due to immense skullfuckery.

Dave · Post by **Dave** » Mon Aug 20, 2012 9:35 pm

Courtney love is an arsehole not because she is a poor downtrodden woman in rock, but because she is a fucking arsehole. I don't care if she's a black trnasexual midget spastic, an arsehole is an arsehole. There's REAMS of evidence and first hand accounts to support that, not least my friend Will (a gay man if that makes any difference to the presumptions you might make about his motives) who knew her personally when she was hanging out with Julian Cope's lot. Even my friend Alison, who used to idolise her, and once shouted at me for daring to mention a negative point of view, has gradually changed her opinion towards a more careful one based on the overwhelming evidence that Love is a shit.

I do not get why she inspires apologists so vehemently, as if she is the ultimate paragon of a great woman in rock. She's not. There have been many more who were greater, stronger, treated worse, blazed the trails that Love copied with aplomb, and were just more real in every single fucking way. If folks idolise her, fair play, that's their deal but my considered and educated deal is that she's a bullshitter of the highest order and I literally cannot think of one thing I respect about her. Opinions and all that, but that's mine. I just do not care if others have a problem with that. This thing with the Mercury is new to me but is simply no surprise at all, and Fender should equally hang their heads in shame.

EDIT: And lest we mistake this for a woman bashing comment need I point out that a tiny bit of research into music history shows MANY instances of men being totally manipulative arseholes too - Eazy E is a good starting point. I believe even the fucking Beatles did shoddy deals on signed bands as a tax dodge of sorts. Arseholes is arseholes.

ekwatts · Post by **ekwatts** » Tue Aug 21, 2012 7:42 am

I don't disagree; she's done plenty of mental, nutcase things. I just think that the majority of Courtney "criticism" is fairly easily identifiable as the impotent rage of nerds toward a woman whose life they would have loved to have lived, except with a penis. Stories are created based on other stories whose foundations might even be true, but whose details have been twisted by a vendetta (did you know Courtney killed Kurt? LOL). So I've adopted a default position. I love her music and ignore everything she does outside that as the actions of a damaged rock star who has been put through the mill. Curiously, she has also developed a burgeoning magazine/newspaper industry to catalogue her actions, similar to the one that hounded Amy Winehouse to her death, made up entirely of anti-feminist publications and writers, printing horrible photo after horrible photo to... I dunno, make other women feel better?

Easy E is one of those "open secret" closet homosexuals in rap, though. Being a homosexual in such a homophobic music scene (see also: Heavy metal) can really push one down the road of being a right dickhead, more often than not as a defense mechanism. I feel bad for him more than anything because it can't be easy (seewhatIdidthere?!).

Dave · Post by **Dave** » Tue Aug 21, 2012 9:58 am

Fair points and well made Erik. I'm not trying to to completely damn anyone liking her for their own reasons. I am , after all, firmly in the camp that can seperate the art from the artist (shit, I've even listened to fucking Screwdriver in the past because I know I won't turn into a racist by doing so, nor did I put money in their pockets in doing so). Though her music does nowt for me personally I'd never knock someone who connected to it in their own way.

I also agree that it is worth defending where pat repetition of unsubstantiated rumour rears its head.

Anyway back to the guitar: I have to say I've never 'got' the venus (except maybe the 12 stringer) but the original Merc with the f-hole and 3x3 suddenly makes sense to me. Funny thing is I'd aways assumed these were a vintage guitar model that had fallen out of manufacture, not a guitar that was made in the 90's. Pretty interesting story over all. I hope they do reproduce them.

ekwatts · Post by **ekwatts** » Tue Aug 21, 2012 10:04 am

Dave wrote:Fair points and well made Erik. I'm not trying to to completely damn anyone liking her for their own reasons. I am , after all, firmly in the camp that can seperate the art from the artist (shit, I've even listened to fucking Screwdriver in the past because I know I won't turn into a racist by doing so, nor did I put money in their pockets in doing so). Though her music does nowt for me personally I'd never knock someone who connected to it in their own way.

I also agree that it is worth defending where pat repetition of unsubstantiated rumour rears its head.

Anyway back to the guitar: I have to say I've never 'got' the venus (except maybe the 12 stringer) but the original Merc with the f-hole and 3x3 suddenly makes sense to me. Funny thing is I'd aways assumed these were a vintage guitar model that had fallen out of manufacture, not a guitar that was made in the 90's. Pretty interesting story over all. I hope they do reproduce them.

I have to say, yes, I do like the original Mercury; the Rickenbacker influence is more obvious with the F-hole and binding, but I'd like all that with a Fender headstock on top. Because I love Fender headstocks. Specifically, I really do love the slightly melted Venus headstock. It's a very nice design and it's sad that it was never resurrected.

MattK · Post by **MattK** » Wed Aug 22, 2012 12:40 pm

ekwatts wrote:Specifically, I really do love the slightly melted Venus headstock. It's a very nice design and it's sad that it was never resurrected.

's originally a Coronado headstock actually. And a lot of the 60s/70s F acoustics used it too.

h8mtv · Post by **h8mtv** » Wed Aug 22, 2012 12:52 pm

Wow, the 2nd pic of CL towards the top makes her look pretty good. Angles.

Thom · Post by **Thom** » Wed Aug 22, 2012 1:13 pm

taylornutt wrote:

I was watching when this pic was taken - Glastonbury '99, was a great show.

taylornutt · Post by **taylornutt** » Wed Aug 22, 2012 1:49 pm

MatthewK wrote:
ekwatts wrote:Specifically, I really do love the slightly melted Venus headstock. It's a very nice design and it's sad that it was never resurrected.
's originally a Coronado headstock actually. And a lot of the 60s/70s F acoustics used it too.

I would have preferred they would have stuck with larger Coronado Style headstock (like her pink guitar) as opposed to the smaller strat headstock that went on the actual Vista Models. I just prefer the larger headstock.

theshadowofseattle · Post by **theshadowofseattle** » Wed Aug 22, 2012 8:42 pm

The Venus is one of the only guitars on which pearloid looks good.

taylornutt · Post by **taylornutt** » Thu Aug 30, 2012 2:59 pm

Though I am still considering moving this guitar, I played it last night and discovered that I think it is currently strung with .12s. The seller said it had .11s, but the low E is thicker than my other guitars with .11s. That would explain why it's so uncomfortable to bar an F-Chord. At 25.5" scale, .12s are really thick so I may swap it out for .11s and see it if it plays better. I have .11s on my Fender Coronado and it plays amazing and I have .11s on all my other guitars except my Compstang that has .12s.

MattK · Post by **MattK** » Thu Aug 30, 2012 9:06 pm

I think you're on the right track there - finding the best gauge is transformative for some guitars.
Reminds me to go string my Jag with 12s.

Fine Swine · Post by **Fine Swine** » Mon Sep 03, 2012 3:33 pm

Ooohhh, want... Love the neck binding!