Post by theorage on Nov 3, 2008 2:14:54 GMT -5
Greetings all from the original GNuts board, first-time poster in this forum. I do a lot of lutherie, and for once I thought I’d find some time to document my latest project as a way of thanking you, regular contributors.
Somehow I got myself hooked on a peculiar set of Fender guitars: the Squier Venus of the short-lived MIJ Vista Series of 1997/1998. Fender was attempting to raise the bar for Squier, and dang it -- it worked too well! The quality of the Japanese Super-Sonic, Jagmaster, Venus, and Venus XII rivaled the American Fender models.
At the time the Venus was quite a departure for Fender… a bound neck, TOM bridge, angled pickups and neck pocket, a 3-way toggle switch, no tone control, and most infamously, the signature axe for the highly-esteemed musician, ah-hem... courtney love.
Fact is, I have four, with one being the Venus XII twelve string. They are well constructed and have a nice “woody” tone. Because to the masses they are lowly Squiers, they can be modified without reservation, right? The stock photo above shows the standard model with Vol., p/u toggle switch, and phone jack output on the pickguard. On two Veni, I’ve relocated the output jack to the side edge and inserted a master tone control. My sunburst was kept otherwise stock while another has a Bill Lawrence S280 single coil and a Dimarzio Air Norton HB in the bridge.
The modification to a third Venus is herein detailed and pictured above. I took the one with the nicks and dings and routed out the p/u cavities to accommodate P90-sized pickups. I mounted the body and empty pickguard onto a Bridgeport CNC mill to get the machining done. I ditched the p/u toggle switch and carved out room for a 5-way blade switcher. Again, the output jack was moved to the bottom edge, leaving room for two tone controls. Other misc. hardware mods are Gotoh SD91-MG locking Kluson-style tuners, StrapLoks, and witch-hat knobs. Looks kinda like a right-side-up Mosrite!
A Dimarzio DLX-90 (bridge) and a S. Duncan SP90-1 (neck) were fitted (below). The poles match up fine under the strings with the bridge and with angled alignment. However, the single coil P90 works best at the neck position for this to remain true.
Anyone who has retro-fitted P90’s into a guitar will tell you that skill/luck is needed to get the anchor holes positioned just right and perfectly true so that the pickups position well. My Guild bass used a metal plate to help out, so I did the same. Barely seen underneath are two aluminum anchor plates that screw into the body wood with threaded holes for the p/u screws. Along with some x-y adjustment, the plates also accommodate the two different screw locations between the traditional “in between the poles” and the “outside edges” Dimarzio type. Who knows how much swapping will be done! I used springs to give the back force, but foam is fine if you use the right thickness.
Now to the electronics where most GN2 folk like to dig in. P90’s are awesome on Fender-style guitars: fat yet still possessing single coil flavor. Since they generally are screwed into the body, they take a different mode of installation from std. HB’s and SC’s in pickguards. What you have are ~8 conductors that are tethered body-to-scratchplate. I’ve always thought a clean disconnect between the two would be nice (especially for experimenters!), and for the first time, I installed a 10-pin double row header connector. Love it. Wish I did it on more of my guitars. You can also see the big pocket rout for the superswitch.
Unscrew the pickguard and pop out the connector – fully separated! Underneath one of the wires is a screw for grounding everything locally: the p/u shields, signal ground, string ground. I tend to leave the full length of pickup wire intact so more gets looped around than what would be cosmetically cleaner.
The practical combinations of a HB and the SC are wonderfully exploited by JohnH’s H-SC wiring scheme guitarnuts2.proboards.com/thread/3170/hum-sing.
As a refresher here, the wiring gives the following control, with the 2-4 positions having the option to split the HB:
Neck
Neck * Bridge
Neck + Bridge
Neck * Bridge OoP
Bridge
Kudos and much thanks – perfectly fantastic! I’m using a tone control for each p/u because different flavors especially come out in series combos. Plus, I had a hole to fill. (Dear God not a reference to you, courtney.) I used ½ of a push/pull DPDT pot for the SPDT role of splitting the HB. I prefer a separate toggle switch, but I just didn’t do it for some reason. Maybe later. Added some extra copper foil shielding for fun… overall, noise is not an issue here.
Below is a connection diagram for a Oak 4P5T superswitch for convenience to those who might want to wire up JohnH’s schematic.
The guitar has a Fender-vibe that finds new sonic territory, becoming one of my favorites... On the whole, this guitar is amazing to play and the tonal options are varied without redundancies. Great for live and studio work. Thanks everyone for your contributions over the years; your comments or questions welcome. -- Theo
Somehow I got myself hooked on a peculiar set of Fender guitars: the Squier Venus of the short-lived MIJ Vista Series of 1997/1998. Fender was attempting to raise the bar for Squier, and dang it -- it worked too well! The quality of the Japanese Super-Sonic, Jagmaster, Venus, and Venus XII rivaled the American Fender models.
At the time the Venus was quite a departure for Fender… a bound neck, TOM bridge, angled pickups and neck pocket, a 3-way toggle switch, no tone control, and most infamously, the signature axe for the highly-esteemed musician, ah-hem... courtney love.
Fact is, I have four, with one being the Venus XII twelve string. They are well constructed and have a nice “woody” tone. Because to the masses they are lowly Squiers, they can be modified without reservation, right? The stock photo above shows the standard model with Vol., p/u toggle switch, and phone jack output on the pickguard. On two Veni, I’ve relocated the output jack to the side edge and inserted a master tone control. My sunburst was kept otherwise stock while another has a Bill Lawrence S280 single coil and a Dimarzio Air Norton HB in the bridge.
The modification to a third Venus is herein detailed and pictured above. I took the one with the nicks and dings and routed out the p/u cavities to accommodate P90-sized pickups. I mounted the body and empty pickguard onto a Bridgeport CNC mill to get the machining done. I ditched the p/u toggle switch and carved out room for a 5-way blade switcher. Again, the output jack was moved to the bottom edge, leaving room for two tone controls. Other misc. hardware mods are Gotoh SD91-MG locking Kluson-style tuners, StrapLoks, and witch-hat knobs. Looks kinda like a right-side-up Mosrite!
A Dimarzio DLX-90 (bridge) and a S. Duncan SP90-1 (neck) were fitted (below). The poles match up fine under the strings with the bridge and with angled alignment. However, the single coil P90 works best at the neck position for this to remain true.
Anyone who has retro-fitted P90’s into a guitar will tell you that skill/luck is needed to get the anchor holes positioned just right and perfectly true so that the pickups position well. My Guild bass used a metal plate to help out, so I did the same. Barely seen underneath are two aluminum anchor plates that screw into the body wood with threaded holes for the p/u screws. Along with some x-y adjustment, the plates also accommodate the two different screw locations between the traditional “in between the poles” and the “outside edges” Dimarzio type. Who knows how much swapping will be done! I used springs to give the back force, but foam is fine if you use the right thickness.
Now to the electronics where most GN2 folk like to dig in. P90’s are awesome on Fender-style guitars: fat yet still possessing single coil flavor. Since they generally are screwed into the body, they take a different mode of installation from std. HB’s and SC’s in pickguards. What you have are ~8 conductors that are tethered body-to-scratchplate. I’ve always thought a clean disconnect between the two would be nice (especially for experimenters!), and for the first time, I installed a 10-pin double row header connector. Love it. Wish I did it on more of my guitars. You can also see the big pocket rout for the superswitch.
Unscrew the pickguard and pop out the connector – fully separated! Underneath one of the wires is a screw for grounding everything locally: the p/u shields, signal ground, string ground. I tend to leave the full length of pickup wire intact so more gets looped around than what would be cosmetically cleaner.
The practical combinations of a HB and the SC are wonderfully exploited by JohnH’s H-SC wiring scheme guitarnuts2.proboards.com/thread/3170/hum-sing.
As a refresher here, the wiring gives the following control, with the 2-4 positions having the option to split the HB:
Neck
Neck * Bridge
Neck + Bridge
Neck * Bridge OoP
Bridge
Kudos and much thanks – perfectly fantastic! I’m using a tone control for each p/u because different flavors especially come out in series combos. Plus, I had a hole to fill. (Dear God not a reference to you, courtney.) I used ½ of a push/pull DPDT pot for the SPDT role of splitting the HB. I prefer a separate toggle switch, but I just didn’t do it for some reason. Maybe later. Added some extra copper foil shielding for fun… overall, noise is not an issue here.
Below is a connection diagram for a Oak 4P5T superswitch for convenience to those who might want to wire up JohnH’s schematic.
The guitar has a Fender-vibe that finds new sonic territory, becoming one of my favorites... On the whole, this guitar is amazing to play and the tonal options are varied without redundancies. Great for live and studio work. Thanks everyone for your contributions over the years; your comments or questions welcome. -- Theo
