“Matt and MGW have collaborated for several years to fine-tune the pedal… And the results will astonish you”: Manson Guitar Works' debut fuzz pedal is here, but will Matt Bellamy’s high-end boutique stompbox be worth the wait?

Matt Bellamy of Music shreds on his Manson signature model, on the right, the new deluxe edition of his signature Manson fuzz, which comes with pick tin, and other ephemera.

Sound the horns. Manson Guitar Works’ debut fuzz pedal is finally here. It’s called the Supermassive Black Fuzz, it’s built like a tank, and it promises “vintage traditional fuzz tones as well as otherworldly distortions” that you won’t find from a common or garden variety fuzzbox.

In other words, it is designed for engineering the kind of extra-terrestrial electric guitar tones that co-creator Matt Bellamy relies on for his day job fronting Muse. It looks like this is one of those cases of nominative determinism in action; how it sounds is “supermassive” – a tone big enough to swallow a planet, gaseous giant, or Chthonian, terrestrial, whatever. It’s not fussy.