I do like Muse, even though I was kinda dissapointed by the last album.
Matt Bellamy is the son of George Bellamy of the Tornados ("Telstar", anyone?).
He's a classical trained pianist and I very much respect his guitar playing.
His guitars are made by Jim Manson and are great sounding instruments in themselves - Bare Knuckle Manson pickups, Z-Vex fuzz circuit included, etc.
Manson also has some ready modded Squier and Fender Teles for sale (their pups, fuzz circuit included, mirror scratchplates...). They do a lot of stuff, including their own guitar show.
The lightning thingie is Matt's thing, I guess it's more convenient than a bunch of pedals to tap dance on.
I've seen them live in 2008 and the show was amazing, one of the best I've ever experienced, the recordings fail to capture the intensity of the performance. After the encore, Bellamy literally collapsed.
Now, if you like it or not it's a pure matter of personal taste, but the guy really knows what he's doing and he's good at it.

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La vie est belle, le monde est pourri, make the most of it!

That's a very cool guitar but waaaaay to complicated for me. It will be interesting to see how it evolves.

I wonder what the next step would be actually. Any one any ideas?

CC

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Fender Stratocaster (parts build)
Fender Telecaster 72 Custom RI
Fender Telecoustic Deluxe
Gretsch Electromatic Pro-Jet
Gibson Les Paul Standard Plus
Gibson ES-135
Zenith Type-17
Marshall 70's JMP Superbass 100w
Blackstar HT-5

A theremin-trusrod would be interesting.

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Rated "M" for meaty.

Friend of mine is an engineer and was suggesting making guitars out of "intelligent" plastic. A tiny electric current is passed through the plastic: by changing the current the physical characteristics of the body and neck would be fundamentally changed. In other words, you could change the tonal properties of your instrument in real time at the twist of a knob.

Forum user Big Jay is much into the tonal qualities of body materials - but he didn't take to the idea. I suspect it's not a runner...

BTW: regarding Hugh Manson's guitars and shop. Whether we like the one's he builds for Matt Bellamy or not some of Manson's instruments are gob-smackingly beautiful. For anyone in my part of the world, that shop is one of the nicest on the planet to my taste: I strongly recommend a visit if you can get there. You'll love what you see.

So happens, Hugh Manson's business partner in that shop is a fella called Adrian Ashton. A fine bass player, founder of Bass Guitar Magazine - and long, long ago he was the bass player in the high school band I was also in! We weren't very good...

Small world.

Cheers - C

Hugh Manson, you're right Ceri, I re-christened him Jim, I'm sorry.
Here are some of his custom guitars
http://www.mansonguitars.co.uk/Custom%2 ... /index.htm
The guitars made for Muse
http://www.mansonguitars.co.uk/Muse%20gallery/index.htm
The guitars made for John Paul Jones
http://www.mansonguitars.co.uk/JPJ%20gallery/index.htm

I don't know about the future, the synth guitar seems to be making a comeback, others are experimenting with materials.
Like Aristides Instruments and their arium composite, I really the results so far
http://www.aristidesinstruments.com/

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La vie est belle, le monde est pourri, make the most of it!

Hi Purple: thank you for that link. For those that can't be bothered to click, here's a reasonably mainstream example. Nice bit of top wood - pictures never do justice to this kinda thing:


Hugh Manson's brother Andy is also a very fine acoustic guitar maker. He does an interesting Spanish neck joint, which is a bit different than the usual. Here's his website:

http://www.andymanson.co.uk/

Cheers - C

Why is it musicians love Muse, but the instrument nerds find all sorts of reasons to dispute the band's musicianship? Hmm...