Fredrik Thordendal

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Fredrik Thordendal (born February 11, 1970) is the lead guitarist and a founding member of the Swedish metal band Meshuggah.

Under the name Fredrik Thordendal's Special Defects, Thordendal released a solo album in 1997 titled "Sol Niger Within" with Ultimate Audio Entertainment. The album was remixed and re-released by Ultimate Audio Entertainment and Relapse Records in 1999 under the title "Sol Niger Within version 3.33". The re-release contains two bonus tracks but omits several parts of the original version.

As a guitarist, Thordendal draws attention with his clean, flowing, jazz influenced lead playing and powerful, rhythmically complex rhythm playing, augmented by his use of low tuned eight string guitars. Most notable is the similarity between his solos and those of legendary jazz guitarist Allan Holdsworth. He is also the primary songwriter for Meshuggah, having written or co-written eight out of the ten songs from Destroy Erase Improve. He also provides backing vocals for Meshuggah in live performances.

Thordendal is also a producer of some note, having produced all of Meshuggah's recent material and also releases for various other bands, France's Fragment among them.

1 Gear
2 Discography
- 2.1 With Meshuggah
- 2.2 Solo
3 External links

[edit] Gear

Fredrik Thordendal uses a selection of custom 8-string and 7-string guitars made by Nevborn and Ibanez (although he has been seen using Gibson Les Pauls, Ibanez Universe 777s, Schecter Diamond series guitars, Coral Electric sitars and various Paul Reed Smith guitars). He and Mårten Hagström have several custom Ibanez guitars which feature alder (one features a flame-maple top with a transparent grey finish) bodies with 3pc maple bolt-on/neck-thru necks, rosewood fingerboards (no inlays), Ibanez licensed floating tremolos (a piezo bridge system is incorporated into one of his 8-stringed Ibanezes), 1 volume knob and no neck pickup. Thordendal is also one of the few that endorse Lundgren pickups using either the Model 7 or the Model 8 pickups accordingly. Asides from the fact that his guitars utilize 7 or 8 strings, the scale lengths of the neck of his 8-string custom guitars also baritone using a scale length of 30" (750mm) whilst a few of his 7 strings have 27" (675mm) scale necks and one of his Nevborn 8-stringed guitars has a 29" (725mm) scale. Thordendal also has 1 Ibanez 7-string acoustic.

However, Fredrik does not use many pedals live and unlike most guitarists, does not use tube amplifiers onstage. He uses a Line 6 Vetta II modeling amp (although once he did use Marshall JCM800s and has been seen onstage with Randall cabinets) instead to digitally mould his sound. His pedalboard is also rather small. The main devices he uses are a Line 6 PODXT, a modified Yamaha Breath Controller (which makes his guitar sound like a wind instrument) and a Digitech delay, a homemade volume pedal, T.C Electronic Booster and Sustainer boxes and finally, occasionally an octaver pedal, used most frequently after the original Meshuggah bassist left halfway during a tour (hence an octaver was used to keep the full sound). However he does use an ADA Rackmount delay processor and that is connected to Mårten Hagström's guitar so when Thordendal solos in Meshuggah, he turns on this delay pedal to retain a thicker rhythm sound.

Both Hagström and Thordendal use 0.009-0.060 (or 0.070 in the case of 8-strings) DR strings.