Outside of UFO enthusiast Tom DeLonge, few guitarists embrace sci-fi quite so wholeheartedly as Matt Bellamy – both in the album themes for Muse’s space-age rock operas and his onstage Manson electric guitars, which have dazzled audiences with outlandish chrome finishes and MIDI touchscreens for over two decades.
But few of his custom builds have married the aesthetic and the instrument quite so successfully as the recently unveiled Manson Mask, which takes the mirror angled mask featured in Muse’s recent videos and live show, and turns it into a guitar – with typically stunning results.
The design made its official debut at the start of Muse’s European tour in June, where it was used for the title track from latest album Will of the People, plus fan favorite Hysteria.
But, as Manson Guitars’ Head of Design & Production Tim Stark explains, the guitar was first conceived a long time prior.
“As soon as I saw the first couple of videos for the Will of the People album launch – Won’t Stand Down and Compliance in early 2022 – and saw the mirror angled mask, I thought a guitar with differing planes similar to the mask would look cool,” he tells Guitar World.
“I’d wanted to do a modern looking angular ‘carved top’ for a while, along the lines of a stealth bomber like the F-117. This just married the two ideas together.”
This isn’t the first time Manson has looked to military airplanes for inspiration – Bellamy’s Bomber model remains one of his all-time classic designs – but the radical angles marked uncharted territory for the brand.
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“The main challenge was getting from the idea to a working image to see if it could actually work,” says Stark.
When the guitar was first conceived, Manson had started to move over to CNC (computer numerical control) machining, which allowed for the creation of guitars using computer-aided designs (CAD). Stark had made a start on the design, but the logistics of actually building the guitar were still yet to be realized.
We knew we’d made something pretty cool when it all came together, but none of us were quite prepared for the reaction we got
Tim Stark
The addition of CAD mastermind James Yarde to the Manson team meant that by the time the Will of the People tour came around, he was able to make Stark’s vision a reality – although its angular form came with certain caveats.
“James noted that the cavities were defined by the angles on the front,” Stark explains. “Some careful consideration had to go into the siting of the controls within the cavities.”
With the design mapped out, it was up to woodworking luthier Emily Gardner to shape the guitar’s avant-garde top, which Stark notes is “right up there” with Manson’s most difficult builds.
“She spent hours working it, getting each plane flat and crisping up each line where the planes met,” Stark enthuses. “That was the biggest challenge, really. Her skill and eye for detail really gave me the best platform to get the paint on and show off the final result.”
And what a final result. Although there has been the occasional angular guitar top in recent years – Ernie Ball Music Man’s Kaizen springs to mind – the Mask is defined by the way it accentuates its sharp lines, rather than integrating them as part of a smoother whole. The ultimate effect is one of a distorted mirror, aided by the use of reflective chrome paint.
Yet while the aesthetics were challenging, the rest of the guitar ranks among Bellamy’s most straightforward builds – those acute angles don’t exactly make for easy MIDI screen integration, after all.
“The specs are pretty basic for us, really,” Stark admits of the guitar, which utilizes a two-piece alder body with matte black paint on the back and sides and a gloss chrome effect paint for the masked front. That’s complemented by a 22-fret flamed maple neck with ebony fretboard and matching chrome headstock.
Hardware is all Gotoh 510 series, while electronics comprise a Sustainiac system and Simon Thorn-built Manson PF-1 (Bellamy's go-to pickup for the last seven to eight years), with a single volume control and faux tone load.
“It’s pretty simple for a Manson guitar when you consider what else we have created,” says Stark. “The visual of the mask design was the bit that we wanted to shout about on this design.”
And Manson Guitars weren’t the only ones shouting about the model; just hours after its debut outing, Muse fans were fawning over its striking appearance.
As Stark puts it: “We knew we’d made something pretty cool when it all came together, but none of us were quite prepared for the reaction we got on our socials when Matt first played it on stage in Austria.”
Naturally, plenty of fans are asking whether they’ll be able to own their own Mask guitar – and despite the challenges, Stark is keen to make it happen.
“I think there’s a definite chance we’ll release it as a limited run at some point,” he teases. “It definitely won’t be a regular production model as it’s a very time-consuming build.”
It’s safe to say that fans shouldn’t go expecting an affordable price tag, but there might be another way they can get up-close and personal with the model.
“It’d be nice for us to get it out into people’s hands during the WOTP tour schedule if we can,” Stark says.
Let’s hope so – it is, after all, the will of the people.
