Manson Guitar Works launches the Verona MB, an exact recreation of Matt Bellamy’s stage-used Will Of The People guitar
[Editor’s Note: Meng Ru Kuok, Founder & CEO of Caldecott Music Group is a part owner of Manson Guitar Works. Guitar.com is part of Caldecott Music Group]
Manson Guitar Works has unveiled the Verona MB, a production version of the guitar Matt Bellamy used onstage during Muse’s recent Will Of The People Tour.
Taking its name from the eighth track of Muse’s most recent album Will Of The People, the Verona is the result of months of tour testing by Bellamy.
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The Verona comes in two configurations: the Verona MB, an exact recreation of Matt Bellamy’s stage-used guitar; and the Verona Classic, which offers alternative finishes and a single-coil bridge pickup, instead of the MB’s Manson V-Rail pickup.
Standard specs on both include an alder body, roasted figured hard maple neck with a 22-fret rosewood fingerboard and modern four-bolt contoured heel, body contours which take inspiration from Manson’s MA ranges, a Sky Blue scratchplate and two-point Gotoh 510 tremolo bridge.
Credit: Manson Guitar Works
Extensive R&D went into developing the pickups for the Verona; the team at Manson put over a decade’s worth of experience into designing and testing dozens of possible pickups specifications to land on the sound Bellamy was looking for.
The team called on their experience building multi-rail pickups to develop a pickup configuration with the bridge pickup sporting a dual-rail design wired parallel to produce a hum-cancelling effect, but with an output and tone to match the neck and middle pickups.
The result? Manson says: “A combination with a spookily accurate ‘60s vibe neck pickup with an added extra splash of hot Texas sauce when the bridge pickup joins the action.” These pickups are controlled via a single volume and two tone knobs, and on the Verona MB, the option to run the bridge pickup in series or parallel.
“Tonally, the neck pickup was everything,” says Matt Bellamy. “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.”
In terms of availability, both the Verona MB and Verona Classic are available now from Manson Guitar Works and official Manson dealers, priced at £3,299 and £2,999, respectively. A left-handed version of the Verona MB is available.
For more info, head to Manson Guitar Works.
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
