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Fredrik Thordendal
Background information
Birth name	Fredrik Thordendal
Born	February 11, 1970 (1970-02-11) (age 37)
Origin	Sweden
Genre(s)	Heavy metal
Occupation(s)	Musician
Instrument(s)	Electric guitar Bass Guitar
Associated acts	Meshuggah Fredrik Thordendal's Special Defects
Notable instrument(s)
custom Nevborn and Ibanez 8- and 7-strings

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, jazz-influenced lead-playing and complex rhythm-playing, augmented by his use of low-tuned eight-string guitars. Most notable is the similarity between his solos and those of renowned jazz guitarist Allan Holdsworth. He also contributes to the songwriting for Meshuggah, as well as providing backing vocals 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, Switzerland's Fragment among them.

Guitars
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 3-piece 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), one 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.

Amps and effects used onstage:
• Line 6 Vetta II head units
• Line 6 POD Pro
• Line 6 cabs
• 33 MIDI breath controller built by Johan Haake
• Clavia Nord G2 (Not 100% sure, citation is needed)
• Unknown pedal (treadle-type pedal that is suspected to control a chorus effect.)
• T.C. Electronics preamp

Other amps and effects used:
• Marshall Valvestate 8200
• Mesa/Boogie .50 Caliber+
• Mesa Engineering Dual-Rectifier
• Marshall JCM800
• Marshall 1960A cab
• Rocktron Juice Extractor
• T.C. Electronics chorus and flanger
• Homemade "Les amp" head unit
• Homemade 1x12 cab
• Yamaha breath controller
• Volume controller (Yamaha BC controls amount of volume that the controller will allow through)
• ADA rackmount delay
• Digitech delay pedal
• Modified pedal that controls delay parameters

• Psykisk Testbild (EP, 1989)
• Contradictions Collapse (1991)
• None (EP, 1994)
• Selfcaged (USA version) (1995)
• Selfcaged (1995)
• Destroy Erase Improve (1995)
• Chaosphere (1998)
• Nothing (2002)
• I (EP, 2004)
• Catch Thirty-Three (2005)
• Nothing - Re-issue (2007)

• Sol Niger Within (1997)

• Thordendal's pedals explained
• Official Meshuggah Website

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