Matt Bellamy on Manson, why Instagram guitarists are the future, and his desire to build an AI prompt guitar
Matt Bellamy’s proudest moment as the owner of Manson Guitars might have happened about five minutes ago – when he got it wrong. “They actually tested me, and I failed the test,” the Muse frontman chuckles as we sit in a conference room in Manson’s brand new showroom in its Devon, UK headquarters.
The test in question was telling the difference between his original Manson 007 guitar, and the ding-for-ding, super-limited replica Black Edition version the company brought out last year. Despite Bellamy having used the guitar on stage and in the studio for years, knowing every inch of his most iconic instrument, he couldn’t work it out.
READ MORE: The Close Up: Muse guitarist Matt Bellamy’s most iconic and beloved guitar, the Manson 007
“They put the two guitars up, and they said, ‘Can you tell which one’s original?’” he explains. “And I picked the wrong one! And I took my time! I was looking at all the looking details, the cracks, and everything – that’s how accurate it was!”
That the company was able to create such a remarkably accurate replica of his original, and sell them out almost instantly despite a five-figure price tag, speaks to the way the brand has evolved in the half a decade since he took ownership of the small guitar brand that had supplied him with custom instruments since he was a young guitarist hanging around Hugh Manson’s Exeter shop.
The fact that we’re sitting down surrounded by various Manson prototypes and legendary instruments represents another milestone. Bellamy is back in his hometown to christen Manson’s brand new showroom, which sits above an expansion to the Ashburton factory that will enable the brand to scale up their UK operation and meet the considerable demand the brand has been battling with in recent years.
Most of that has been driven by Bellamy, of course. Ever since Hugh Manson started building eye-catching t-style guitars for him, embedded with various wild and wonderful technology in the early days of Muse’s rise to fame, player and brand have become intertwined in a rare way – something that was codified when Bellamy took ownership of the company in 2019.
Image: Kevin Winter/Getty Images for iHeartRadio
History Lesson
The new artist showroom is a testament to this partnership – dotted around the walls and on stands are a mixture of iconic guitars and rare curios from the archives, everything from an aborted acoustic prototype, to Bellamy’s “GEO” mask guitar.
“Today is the first time I’ve seen it all laid out like that,” he marvels. “I mean, for me, it’s awesome. It’s like a museum of my history. I’ve got a couple of guitars at home actually, not far from here, that I was thinking of bringing in here, like the original DeLorean guitar. I think that was in here at one point, actually. But Adrian [Ashton, Manson MD] asked me to take it home because he’s scared of having something so valuable here!”
As nice as it is to take a tour through his personal guitar history, seeing the showroom in its current form sparks something: “Thinking about the future though,” he muses “I would love to see like a few other guitars on the wall that aren’t mine.”
Bellamy’s ownership of Manson has seen the brand diversify its artist roster outside of the core two that it started with Bellamy and Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones (Manson was Jones’ longtime tech). Recent years have seen signature models for the likes of Skindred’s Mikey Demus and a collaboration with Adam “Nolly” Getgood, the Oryx. Bellamy reveals that the brand is currently working with Blur’s Graham Coxon on a signature model, and are also developing a guitar with online guitar sensation Emi Grace.
“I’m excited about us bringing in these new younger guitarists, who are going to take it to the next level,” he explains. “You know, it can’t just always rely on me. I like the idea of there being another face or two that start to become as associated with the brand as I am. That would be the long-term goal.”
Bellamy name-dropping Grace is not accidental – he was personally involved in getting the 22-year-old into the Manson orbit. “I reached out to her because she kept coming up on my feed on Instagram,” he chuckles. “I was like, who’s this amazing guitarist?!”
It’s a very 2026 way for an artist to be discovered, but it’s one that Bellamy is clearly enthused by – even if it flies in the face of how guitarists would traditionally earn their stripes.
“I see guitarists like her as being the future,” Bellamy notes. “These Instagram-type players. It’s an interesting development, because these people can now actually have a real career as an instrumentalist. For real, without needing to write songs and being a band in the traditional sense. I think that’s actually a good thing for players, you know? They have this new way of monetising what they do.”
Image: Press
Clean Slate
Bellamy, of course, was very much someone who was in a band and wrote songs as the bandleader and frontman of Muse. But his revolutionary and individual approach to gear – particularly his penchant for integrating effects, MIDI controllers and other tech directly into his instruments – was borne out of the limitations of being in a three-piece band that didn’t have a lot of support around it at the start.
“A lot of that digital stuff came from being a singer/guitarist and wanting to be able to do effects on the move rather than being restricted by the pedalboard,” he explains. “This was before I had techs that did stuff for me! So in those early years, I was like, ‘What can I have that’s integrated into the guitar?’”
Bellamy’s earliest Manson creations were notable for their onboard effects, but also because they weren’t quite the normal shape either – Tele-inspired sure, but different enough to be a clean slate to craft his music on.
“It’s got to be something unique. It’s got to be,” Bellamy says of his approach to guitar design. “That is literally how it started for me. Because every time I picked up a Tele, a Strat, a Les Paul, I just found myself playing music associated with those instruments. I always found that I needed my own thing to make my own thing. Otherwise, I’m just weighed down by the history of this instrument.
“So I wanted a fresh start, and that was really why I came up with the shape: as soon as I picked it up, it felt like a blank canvas to me. So that’s really how it started for me in terms of guitar design. Obviously that was when it was with Hugh [Manson], but that attitude is how we got to where we are now I think.”
Image: Press
Back To The Future
For two decades, Bellamy has been unapologetic in his quest to drive the electric guitar forward in technological terms – whether that’s using onboard effects, MIDI controllers or, perhaps most famously of all, mounting a Korg Kaoss Pad right into the body of his guitar. That was quite a long time ago, however, and its clear that Bellamy sees his ownership of Manson as an opportunity to push the boundaries once again.
“I want to update the tech in the guitar a little bit, and come up with some new ideas for that,” he confidently declares. “I like the idea of trying to integrate AI components into guitars, where you can prompt a guitar to sound a certain way. I’d like to explore that. That tech exists already in the pedal world, but I like the idea of trying to integrate some of that into guitar, so you can essentially talk to your guitar and tell it how you want it to sound. I’m not quite sure the tech’s there yet, but we’ll see.”
AI is of course an extremely polarising word to be throwing around in the music world, but Bellamy clearly sees that there’s a place for the technology to be used in the right scenario.
“I’ve got a big bank of synthesisers, and it can sometimes take hours and hours to get a sound out of it,” he explains. “Whereas the prompting synthesiser thing is interesting. The sound quality isn’t as good, but the interface is great, you know? I like the idea of prompting something, but then something analogue happens – that’s interesting to me. I think that’s probably a long way to go before we get that into a guitar, but the idea of it is interesting.”
One thing that isn’t up for debate is the enduring power of the real-life human element in all of this of course – and he can already see the backlash against AI coming from the next generation.
“I’m not that worried about AI music because I can already see a change with my kids,” he reflects. “They’re gravitating towards the real so much more now because half of what they see on their feeds now is AI. So for that reason, I think live music is going to be trending upwards, with real musicians playing. I think that’s what we’re going to be craving more than anything else, because it’s the only thing we know is real.
“Because everything that’s digital now, everything in our phones is starting to be like, ‘Is it AI? I don’t know!’ You know? But when you see it in person, you see it live, you know it’s real. So I think that real life experience of music is definitely trending upwards.”
Image: Press
New Horizons
The second decade of Manson Guitar Works has been characterised by evolution, and trying new things – whether that’s collaborating with Cort on the hugely successful affordable Meta series, getting into the high-end relic game with the Black Edition, or collaborating with ThorpyFX on the brand’s first effects pedal.
The future, Bellamy envisions, will involve more of all of the above, and maybe even some adventures into new territory…
“There are some of my guitars from the early years which were very special, and I think the fans really want. So I think we will keep doing limited runs of some of these early guitars, but at the same time, we’re always looking to create something new, as well.
“The Oryx eight-string, is a new arrival, and we’ve got the Wow! guitar (the red MB that ties in with Muse’s recent The Wow! Signal album) – that’s really nice and we’re going to start selling that soon. We’re also talking about maybe doing a pedal with Graham as well – an experimental one – and we’re going to do a second run of the Supermassive pedal with a couple of minor tweaks, so we’re expanding on the pedal front too.”
There’s also the question of amps – it seems like a logical place for Manson to explore next, but clearly its only a field that Bellamy would want the brand to get into if it was bringing something new to the table – the idea of sticking his name on a generic amp clearly doesn’t appeal.
“It’d have to be something innovative and different,” he affirms. “But that could be two different ways. It could be like the hyper hand-wired tube thing, or it could be something really on the futuristic side, like an AI prompt amp or something like that. I don’t know. We’ll see. But I could see that happening. We haven’t looked into it that deeply, as to how realistic it is on the manufacturing side, and you know it probably would have to be some kind of partnership. But I can see I could see something like that happening.
“I like the idea of getting some really amazing bass players involved with Manson, as well. I’d like to expand the bass side, and acoustic is something we never really tried,” he points to the prototype hanging on the wall in the room. “That one was made for me when I was trying to work out how to incorporate acoustic sounds live. We never sold it, it was the first attempt, but it’s a nice, lightweight electro-acoustic. But yeah, I like the idea that we can open up a little bit more.”
Reflecting on a relationship with Manson that has spanned the bulk of his musical career, and now eight years as an owner, Bellamy still marvels at the enthusiasm and loyalty that this small Devon boutique builder instills in others.
“I just love how the people love these guitars,” he smiles. “You know, I thought it was just my thing! But we have this really loyal fan base, and even when times are rough, the economy is, like they are now, they still have this enthusiasm for the guitars – that’s what keeps us going.”
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