Ventura L5 Archtop

Mine is the same as everyone else's - I was surprised to find this on the web :) I didn't think there were many people that still had these.

Anyway, mine is the honey finish and, like a few others, it's had a few electrical problems. I replaced the factory tuners with new ones and I've had some minor fret buzz above the 14th fret on the low strings. It would definitely not be a professional's guitar but it suits a hobbyist who doesn't want to pay $3000 for a real L5 just fine :)

As I mentioned above, the fret buzz is annoying but it could be my setup/string combination (12-54s). The sound is very good. I had a 1949 Gibson 175 when I played professionally and this Ventura is close but not that close. Definitely not a professional-quality guitar but good enough for 90% of musicians wanting a jazz box.

Fret buzz and difficulty to keep it in tune have been my issues. The hardware has oxidized somewhat due to my not cleaning it :)

Live play? Yes, most definitely. It is a very rugged axe. Finish? it's great - not a single bubble or problem in 30 years. I would not use it on a gig w/o a backup due to the electrical problems that I've had

I love it - for $500 it can't be beat!

Mid 70's Japanese L5 copy, like everyone elses. Well preserved. All original, tuners hold well, floating bridge in good shape, pu's needed adjusting but no big deal there. Same florentine cutaway, tobacco sunburst as others on here. No case when I bought it, hoping to find cheap hardcase to fit, but living in small town in nowhere Alabama makes running to the store hard, and internet shopping sucks.

Most jazz/blues/funk. Plays the smooth jazz box role very well, and with the bridge pickup, gets aggressive enough for my harder needs. Good amount of sound you can dial in, gets muddy easily, but brightens up to as obnoxious as you can stand.

No clue about factory setup, as Ventura hasn't existed for many years. I bought it about tenth-hand from a shop in Troy, AL, while I was going to school there. Shop owner set it up very low, but no rattles, it plays really nice where it is. Finish is scratched up a bit on the back, mostly belt buckle I guess. It's seen a lot of work, and still continues to, so it's in surprisingly good shape I would say.

I've had a few electrical problems with it, mostly from outdoor gigs and old wiring. But, with a little work, it still goes strong. I use it for everything, from jazz gigs to rock shows to teaching. It's a great guitar for the money, if you can find one.

Ventura no longer exists.

I'd cry if I lost this, mostly sentimental, but it's a great box. I play it through anything I can get my hands on (cause i'm poor) and it always sounds great. I just wish the company was still alive, cause I bet they'd do well in the low price market.

A laminated bodied deep jazz guitar. Bog standard sort of tuners, two humbuckers, floating wooden bridge with two thumbscrew height adjusters and tailpiece. Two volume and two tone knobs and a three way p/u selector switch.
70s Japanese, so I've read. Not sure what the neck is made from, as mine has a heavy tobacco sunburst on it. I never really have an opinion on frets and scale length except that it feels good to me.

I use it for jazz, and am using a fender tranny amp at the moment. The bridge pickup is fairly trebly and the neck pickup is very warm. It could do well for country, and it certainly makes the right fat jazz noises I'm looking for.
I don't use heavy strings, so while not very loud and it is a little trebly, it almost works as an acoustic. This is all grist to the mill when it's plugged in.

I bought mine second hand, and as a deep body jazz guitar for under #200 I think it's great. THe action is fairly nice on it and I find I can adjust the string height easily using the adjustable floating bridge.
The p/u alignment is appalling and I've had to skew the pickups vertically to point them at the strings and balance the volume across the strings more evenly. I just haven't got round to moving them or changing them, because the string separation isn't standard so finding pickups to fit was a little tricky and it will mean re-routing and redrilling the soundboard.

Nothing wrong with it. Feels tough enough and does me fine.
I find the neck comfortable and can get a nice action with it. I find the body a little big - it's about as big as a J200 - but then that's where the warm bottom end comes from.

n/a

I've been playing about 20 years and I like this guitar and the warmth of its tone, but it does make me wish for a real L5 or an equivalent solid wood carved top. It's just a matter of raw quality: the Ventura is a cheap guitar, factory made, and is really pretty good for that, but as I get older I get far too snobby for my means. My main reservation is the annoying fact that the pickups are misaligned and the wrong size.

I bought this guitar new in 1977, It was made in Japan and is a copy of a Gibson. It has two covered Humbuckers that are adjustable. It came with two bridges, an adjustable metal, and a plain wood. The tuners that came on the guitar slip a bit when tuning or putting on new strings but it stays in tune for a long time. The frets seem small and are easy to flat the tone if you don't play a clean note. I would like a little larger fret on the Rosewood finger board.

I bought the guitar hoping for a Gibson country sound and was disapointed in the sound after playing a real Gibson. I spent as much
as I could at the time and had to keep the guitar. I was playing it through a Sears Silvertone twin twelve and it was ok. Today after 24
years I bought a Fender Twin Reverb R.I. and played it through it and
I heard a new guitar. I tweeked the pu's a little and the sound was
amazing. But after 24 years I think it's time to give this guy a try
I will most likey put in new pickups, pots, switches, and jack. Hopefully this will give me a new guitar. I am having this done to my Epiphone and hopefully get the ES335 sound, Now I might try and get some filtron's and turn this into a Gretsch, who knows.

It was set up by the dealer when I bought it and the action was great.
The guitar still looks new today after 24 years, I guess that the thing was built well and finished even better. There are only a few
pickguard scratches. because of the way it's made you don't hit it much on Country songs. The tailpiece, and the bridge is oxidizing a little but the rest of the hardware looks like new. I think that a guitar like this you could afford to buy it some new parts after 24 years of service.

I have gigged with this guitar for over 5 years and have not used a backup. If you read the previous section most of the questions are
there. The finish is great, no wear, Strap buttons are solid, I have
depended on this guitar for 24 years and have never had a problem.

Never needed it

I have been playing for over 30 years. My other guitars are Fender American Dlx Strat. Epiphone Sheraton, but I have had 8 or 9 others
including Fender's, Vox, Yahama, Epiphones. All of them have served me well but I love the look and solid build of this one. I would not buy it again because of the size TOO THICK of a body like semi hollow body better, or a solid body.

My guess is that this guitar was made in the early to mid 70's in Japan. It has 20 frets with block m.o.p. inlays. It has a laminated spruce top with a tobacco sunburst finish. It has two stock chrome covered humbucking pick-ups and seperate volume and tone controls for each.It had stock tuners which were crap, but I've replaced them with Grovers form that approximate era. The new tuners made a huge difference in keeping the guitar in tune and add a nice element of style with their "clover leaf" shape

The pick-ups are clean and warm with an even balance in output. The neck is straight and the action is low.The only effects I use with this guitar are reverb and a little over drive. The sound is a little smoother and less punchy than similar models, but thats exactly what I was looking for.

The guitar was purchased off eBay from a pawn shop in Florida, so I know nothing about its previous owners, but when I got it it was in serious need of a cleaning. The layers of dirt and grime seem to preserved the finish quite nicely. After about two hours of cleaning and polishing, the guitars natural beauty really shined. The guitar plays like a dream, sounds great, and looks cool. I'm a happy man!

I've used this guitar for gigging and recording and its never let me down. It did have a problem slipping out of tune, but I replaced the tuners and it's been solid ever since. The only backup I use with this guitar is an extra set of strings

Company no longer exists

I don't know much about Ventura, but this guitar is great! Maybe I just got lucky but I've had Fenders and Gibsons that didn't play as well or sound as good as this. I am generally not fond of Japanese guitars, but I really like this one. I think I'll keep it.

Near copy of Gibson L5 with a florentine cutaway. Laminate spruce top. Maple side & back. 24 3/4-scale three piece maple neck, rosewood fingerboard with M.O.P. inlays. Twenty fully dressed and leveled medium frets. Floated compensating rosewood bridge. Bound f-holes. Multiple-plied binding on body and headstock.Gotoh replacement tuners. Trapeze tail. Vintage sunburst color still in great condition. Open-coiled humbuckers. Three-plied black pickguard. Full depth body (17" x 3"). The guitar came with a solid but beat up oversize hardshell case. I am not going to grade the different categories for this review because the guitar is an old instrument and somewhat modified from its original condition.

When the neck humbucker is on, the guitar predictably has the warm, mellow tone that's great for melodic chords and arpeggios. Switch the bridge pickup on and the sound gets more compressed yet still very rounded. I generally back way off on the tone controls to about 3 or 4, regardless of what pickup is being used. The controls layout is a little different than a normal setup in that the two upper knobs control the volumes, and the lower ones the tones. I believe this is the alternative layout for 70's Japanese guitars because I came across a Univox archtop with similar configuration some time ago. The Ventura's pickups are extremely hot so they may not be the original electronics. I think the stock pickups had chrome covers whereas mine are open-coiled like the Gibson 500T. The guitar was played side by side with a PRS CE equiped with HFS pickups, and a Yamaha SG2000 with original pickups. Being a full depth, true hollow body, the Ventura yields a very different sound than the other two, yet I am still amazed at how much different it is. It is significantly hotter than the PRS, and also brighter which comes as no surprise because the PRS HFS pickups have probably the darkest voice of all the humbuckers that I have used. The SG2000 wields more crunch and edge, but does not have the spacious and textural sound of the Ventura. At this point I have to stress that I am a recently converted jazzhead, and I have ten sore fingers to attest for that, and in the process I have to un-learned a lot of stuff that I got used to before. Easier said than done. I often find myself slipping back into blues scales while practicing jazz arpeggio runs, mixing minor scales with intervals, but then those two styles both share a common ground: improvisation.
When playing the guitar unplugged, it has decent acoustic sound, though I don't think that's what it was made for. With the two humbuckers mounted directly on top, the soundboard simply cannot flex enough to push the sound through. Although it is loud enough to practice without amp, the sound has a metallic edge, almost brassy, that I do not care for. A jazz player told me to use heavier gauge strings to remedy that problem even after knowing that the guitar has .013 strings. Have I been a recipient of some cruel jokes, I wonder? Anyway, I just might try that (my workout routine includes 50 pushups in the morning, on my fingertips :-)
I usually play the Ventura through a Roland JC77 without any effects, and what comes out of those two 10's is sweet and warm and full of texture. I think I might have found the ideal rig for playing those funky augmented chords. If the guitar's tone pots were fully opened on this amp with EQ set up at 5/5/6/5 (the JC77 has a pseudo presence control called High Treble and it's located in front of the treble knob) the Ventura can really swing that big band high step sound. Setting the tones back half way, it oozes the genuine smoky Wes Coast Blues that's a favorite of many jazz musicians. The wide ranging spectrum of this guitar makes it a good alternative for players who just start swinging into the jazz scene, and not sure whether they should go for the dual pickups or the single floating minihumbucker version of their jazzboxes. I think as players develop further in their ability, they will have a more discriminating ear to discern what guitar is more appropriate for their sound and can make a better choice then. A full depth archtop with dual humbuckers that costs under $500 (I paid well below that for the Ventura) is a good start for both novice or born-again (who? me?) jazz aficionados. I would not recommend a traditional single floater jazzbox for someone who is just starting out because such is a very specialized instrument that was designed for a specific style, and thus would impose restrictions on their development as a jazz player.
When the Ventura is played through a Mesa Boogie 50 Caliber +, it is predictably a lot hotter but still retains a dynamic

The Ventura came to me via a classified ad in the local newspaper so I can only comment on the last owner's setup. Action was set for rock and blues. Light gauge strings (.09) were used. I had the guitar reset for .013-.054, and raised the action a little bit. Other than that, nothing else was changed on it. The frets were medium, fully dressed and leveled (.035) to duplicate the famous Gibson fretless wonder touch. The neck takes a little getting used to; it has the right contour, but is a little bit narrower than my other guitars' -not good for string bending, especially on those frets. The frets' ends are expertly filed to blend into the bound neck which enhances the silky smooth rosewood board. The nut is a replacement, synthetic ivory I believe; though I am not sure if this was necessary because when you fret the strings, the nut no longer comes into play.
Despite the guitar being a full size jazz archtop, it is very comfortable playing it sitting down. Although it is considerably wide at the shoulder, the guitar's main heft comes from the waist down (17" at lower bout). Is it any wonder those jazzcats usually play sitting down? It is not the most comfortable guitar to be played standing up. It weights about the same as a light weight solid body (a Fender Strat or a Les Paul Special) and twice as thick. The archtop is about 3/16" thick so I venture to guess that the sides and back is about the same? There is a soundpost underneath the floating bridge. The trapeze tail looks very sturdy and still posesses a mirror finish. Pickup height is right on, I am guessing on this setup according to the sound balance, high notes are round and not shrill, bass notes are a touch booming but that can be fixed with the amp's EQ.
Vintage sunburst is a very lovely finish on any guitar, but especially appealing on the jazzboxes and the Ventura is no exception. Shoulders, sides and back are in various shades of dark brown and black; the archtop has gorgeous amber tones, and all are under a (multiple?) coat of clear varnish. Beautiful as any real L5. There are some rough spots, however, where the neck joins the body, inside of the florentine cutaway, and on the neck binding. They have some overspray staining the ivory binding (which has now aged into a lovely shade). The Ventura name and the V logo (in place of the L5 headstock logo) are also fake ivory, but not very well cut, certainly not up to Gibson standard. There are no nicks or dents on the body, front or back though it is a well-used instrument.

I am planning to get a new case for the guitar even if it is just for peace of mind. The old case makes it seem like the Ventura has seen a lot of traveling and gigging. But I think the guitar and the case should go together, and want to keep the old case because of the way it looks and the vibe it gives off. Who knows what smoky clubs they have visited, what groove the guitar has jammed on, or whom it has jammed with.
All the hardwares are of top quality with the exception of a seemingly flimsy toggle switch, but I have seen Gibson guitars with worse fit, so no complain here. I am not one who abuses his instruments so durability is not really an issue that worries me.

Since the Ventura company closed its doors a long time ago, I think self-reliance is a good policy where this category is concerned.

I normally play R&B, funk, and blues-based rock. My influences are Commodores, Earth Wind & Fire, Robert Cray, Clapton, Dire Straight, James Brown, Jimmy Page, George Clinton, and yes, Jimi. I have started to listen to Coltrane, Miles, Wes, Grant Green for a few years, and to seriously learn their licks for a couple of years now. The Ventura is my first jazzbox, though I have played an Epiphone ES335 and liked it a lot. The Epiphone is a great axe for Clapton blues-rock, but I think the Ventura's textural sound is better for jazz. When I get better at playing then I might be able to better appreciate the chromatic quality of a L5, but for now I am still struggling to get the arpeggio runs correct which, I guess, is a common dilemma for all of us not-ready- for-prime-time contenders out there.
The last owner of the Ventura is kind of a self-contained musician. He plays Fenders, Gibsons, Fender amps, and a few acoustics, has a room stacked up to the roof with old vinyls, records himself onto a Roland workstation. Mainly a solidbody player, he had bought the guitar used from a local store to expand his tonal palette; as it turned out the Ventura did not fit that bill for him in the end. All the upgrading to the guitar he did not do himself, and it left him in the same way as when it came to him. He did remember that it had substantially heavy strings which he replaced with 09s. I played the guitar through his Fender Champ, and spent an half-hour thinking about the pros and cons before making the purchase.
Pros: great tonal range, balance sound, very hot pickups (I am still not so sure about this in the long run, maybe too hot for jazz), fantastic fretwork, stable tuners (upgrade), responsive controls, sturdy build, good quality hardware, beautiful sunburst (a superficial thing to be sure but who doesn't love a pretty face?), deep florentine cut (some people like the rounded venetian cut better because it is more traditional, but the florentine cut is really great for playing)
Cons: sloppy finish at places, narrow fingerboard (the narrowest of all my guitars, took some getting used to), a bit too heavy (overbuild -a negative point for acoustic properties, but I am contradicting myself ), a bit too wide and too deep (is this a form follows function issue? is this the only way to get that Wes sound? I may be arguing against tradition here)
If you like to get the sound of the ES335, this is not the guitar for you as they are two very different instruments. If what you are after is rockabilly sound or country western twang, the Ventura might do the trick; but I am speaking out of ignorance here because my experience in this area is based purely on listening to Brian Setzer. My particular guitar has a set of different pickups, so the next one I come across may not sound the same. According to the Blue Book On Electric Guitars (yes, there is such a thing ), Ventura was a Japanese maker of medium to good quality guitars who specialized in electric hollowbody and acoustic; their intruments were brought into this country by a New York importer and sold for a number of years in the 1970s. The company had since gone out of business so the chance of finding another one is probably not likely to happen.The Ventura is a good VFM instrument for a student or someone who wants an archtop to gig around and not having to keep watch on it all evening long. But in the mean time if you want to play the gliding octave like Wes, do the melodic string walk like JP, or swing like the Duke's (or Brian's) band then the Ventura is definitely worth a lookover. I am glad I did.