Manson 007

Article on the 007 in Total Guitar's July 2015 issue

007
Manufacturer	Manson Guitars
Used	2001-??-?? – 2011-08-28 (still used in studio)
Body type	Solid
Neck joint	Bolt-on
Body covering	Matte black
Wood	Body: Mahogany Neck: Birds-eye maple Fingerboard: Rosewood with black dots
Bridge	Tune-O-Matic
Electronics	One volume
Pickup(s)	Neck: Seymour Duncan Hot P90 / Fernandes Sustainer FSK-401 Bridge: Bare Knuckle Mississippi Queen P90 (previously Kent Armstrong Motherbucker)
Special circuits	Fernandes Sustainer Z.Vex Fuzz Factory Graphtech Ghost acoustic saddles via preamp (now removed) Z.Vex Wah Probe MIDI strip controller Toggle kill switch SIMS custom Blue LEDs on neck (side)

Information

One of the first custom Manson guitars built for Matt.

Hugh Manson on the Manson 007

"Matt came to me and said, ‘Can you build a guitar with a whammy pedal in it?’ I thought for moment and said, ‘Of course we can‘. Then I looked at the back of a whammy pedal and realised it draws a lot of power. Unless he wanted a guitar full of batteries that he could only use for 40 seconds, it wasn't gonna work. Then I realised the modern whammy has a MIDI controller system with it, so I went to a great friend of mine, Ron Joyce, who does all my weird electronic stuff, and said, ‘I want to control that pedal from this guitar’. He said, All you need is a pot. I looked in to pots but realised that rotary pots gave the wrong feel. Eventually we came up with the linear pot from the side of a keyboard, which acts as a MIDI controller pad and goes in to a microprocessor to control the whammy. It just number crunches MIDI numbers -you tell it what you want it to do and it'll do it. It'll control a whammy pedal, it'll control a kaoss pad, it'll turn the lights up and down, it'll turn your heated blanket on, whatever you want in terms of MIDI. I don't think anyone's done that in a guitar before."

Additional information

This guitar is featured on the "Time Is Running Out" music video. Although this guitar is officially named "007", Matt calls it "Black Ed". Fans have commonly referred to the guitar as "Black Manson" or "Blackie". It is also the first of Matt's Manson guitars to be fitted with a Fernandes Sustainer.

Touring

The 007 was first used in 2001 and was used live until the end of The Resistance Tour in August 2011. It was used for many different songs in various tunings, though from 2006 to 2011 the guitar was most commonly used for Starlight.

On the Absolution Tour DVD, there is a short clip of Muse playing in a small bar in America using this guitar for Stockholm Syndrome. After it, Bellamy walks outside while still playing and throws this guitar in the trash dumpster. A guy then takes it but Bellamy got it back later. In one interview, Matt said after throwing the guitar away and going back to the bus, he thought about it and regretted it because it was one of his favourite guitars and thought he was not going to get it back. When asked why he threw it away, he said it was because it was making a "racket".

In an interview with the July 2010 issue of Guitar Player magazine, Matt explained that he didn't use the guitar live very much due to both it's weight, and the fact that it's much louder than his other guitars. "The one I used the most on The Resistance is called "Black Ed." It has a really amazing tone, but it’s extremely heavy, and it’s also louder than all of my other guitars, so it doesn’t quite work for performing live. It has a few gizmos in it, as well—a Z.Vex Wah Probe, a Z.Vex Fuzz Factory, and an MXR Phase 90."

Matt also mentioned in a 2020 interview with Musicradar that he also stopped using the guitar live due to him almost breaking it one time, stating; "Once I threw it across the stage and it nearly broke, and I got scared and never played it again on stage".^[1]

Studio

Although it has been retired from live use, this guitar has been used extensively in the studio. According to Matt, he has used it while recording practically every album since Origin of Symmetry, referring to it as his "go-to recording guitar" in 2020.^[2] For instance, in the Making of The 2nd Law DVD, Matt is seen using the guitar for Panic Station and Unsustainable. Due to lack of photos/videos however, it's unknown what other songs Matt used the guitar for in the studio.