Muse’s Matt Bellamy has launched a new guitar design with Manson Guitar Works, inspired by some of the frontman’s favourite American road movies.
The singer has said the new model is made in dedication to films such as Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas, Ridley Scott’s Thelma And Louise and the Robert Johnson biopic Crossroads, and the iconic soundtrack music associated with them.
“We are pleased to announce the production version of the Manson Verona MB Signature guitar, built to the exact and detailed specification of Matthew Bellamy’s stage guitar used during the Will Of The People Tour,” Manson Guitar Works wrote on Instagram.
Check out the custom guitar below.
Find the guitars here, listed at a price of between £2,999 and £3,299.
Speaking about the design, Bellamy has said: “Tonally, the neck pickup was everything. It had to capture that vintage clarity – the clean, expressive tone that lives in Ry Cooder’s slide work. I was chasing the emotional voice you hear in the road movies Paris, Texas and Crossroads, that haunting, human sound that feels like it’s echoing across an empty desert highway.”
“The neck pickup on the Verona model is the soul of the guitar. It needed to deliver purity and presence, without ever feeling overdriven or artificial. It had to feel honest and epic, like one of my favourite films of all time Thelma And Louise when the horizon opens up and the sky just swallows the road. But also a tone that can live alongside my other more modern sounding guitars.”
Bellamy’s association with Manson Guitar Works goes back 25 years, with the musician being a devoted fan of the Devonian workshop since Muse’s early days. In 2019, he became a majority shareholder in the company.
Elsewhere, bassist Chris Wolstenholme recently opened up about the future of Muse, suggesting they were now thinking about their new album. The follow-up to 2022’s ‘Will Of The People’ has a likely arrival date of 2026, he told The Leona Graham Podcast.
“I think we’ll start very, very soon, like in the next couple of months,” Wolstenholme said in February. “We’ve got a few gigs in June. Only a handful – that’s the only gigs we’re doing this year.
“I don’t think the idea is to do anything really serious until next year, so I would imagine that 2026 will be a new album, barring any disasters.”
