Manson Guitar Works and Adam “Nolly” Getgood’s Oryx series of six and seven-string electric guitars is available to order
Featuring a sleek, 21st-century S-style design and Nolly’s signature Bare Knuckle Polymath humbuckers, the Launch Edition Oryx models are built for performance
Manson Guitar Works and Adam “Nolly” Getgood have collaborated on a quartet of high-end electric guitars tailor-made for expansive, progressive styles.
The Oryx range is offered in six and seven-string formats, with finish choices of Noly Racing Green or Dry Satin Black, and it features a host of premium features, including Nolly’s signature Bare Knuckle Polymath electric guitar pickups, 24 Jescar stainless steel frets, Gotoh 510 Magnum locking tuners and a Tone Pros string-through-body hardtail bridge.
The Launch Edition Oryx models each have a lightweight, two-piece solid alder body, with a bolt-on maple neck and an ecologically sound Richlite fingerboard.
While many contemporary builds favour super-flat or compound radius fingerboards, here we have a slightly more conservative 12” radius, and the neck profile is described as a Modern D. The six-string models have a standard S-style 25.5” scale length, while their seven-string counterparts measure 26”.
The Polymath pickups are interesting. Nolly describes them as, “an antidote to scooped, harsh or boomy tone, they’re all about broad, characterful midrange, addictively juicy playing feel and trim, percussive low end”.
Controlling these, we have volume and tone pots, and a six-position Free-Way blade pickup selector that allows for selecting pickups in series and parallel. Indeed, while the Oryx presents itself as a 21st-century instrument, the Free-Way allows you to access parallel-coil sounds from the Polymath pickups that Nolly describes as sounding “somewhere between a P90 and a hot tele”.
The Oryx silhouette looks super ergonomic, with extensive contouring, and enhanced upper-fret access, and squared off horns an iconoclastic move for a doublecut.
Get the MusicRadar Newsletter
Want all the hottest music and gear news, reviews, deals, features and more, direct to your inbox? Sign up here.
There are no fingerboard markers but some Hyper Glow side markers will aid navigation, Elsewhere, there is a spoke nut truss rod adjuster for painless neck adjustments, and the guitars ship in a Mono Sleeve case.
The Launch Edition Oryx models are now available to order direct from Manson with a deposit of £500, and are priced £2,899 for six-string models, with the 7-string guitars priced £2,999.
See Manson Guitar Works to order.
Jonathan Horsley has been writing about guitars and guitar culture since 2005, playing them since 1990, and regularly contributes to MusicRadar, Total Guitar and Guitar World. He uses Jazz III nylon picks, 10s during the week, 9s at the weekend, and shamefully still struggles with rhythm figure one of Van Halen’s Panama.
“A pro-quality tool for hard-working musicians who like the guitar to do the heavy lifting”: Fender American Ultra II Stratocaster HSS
“You never know what will happen. You’re on a bus with pythons”: Orianthi on her Orange Oriverb amp, how soloing is like rapping and why confetti cannons are just one of the risks on an Alice Cooper tour