Skwisgaar Skwigelf (Dethklok) Guitar Rig

Skwisgaar Skwigelf, lead guitarist for extreme metal band Dethklok is also known as “The Fastest Guitarist Alive”. Skwigelf’s hands have been appraised by insurance companies as worth ten-billion dollars, or one billion per finger.

In his “Advanced Fast Hand Finger Wizard Master Class”, Skwigelf states that his Gibson Explorer features EMG 81 and EMG 85 pickups, and his hardware includes Krank Revolution and Krankenstein amplifiers, multiple Krank Krankenstein guitar cabinets.

No doubt this gear was used throughout the bands 2007 album, The Dethalbum.

In 2007 Epiphone release the Thunderhorse Explorer – in a limited run to – commemorate Brendon Small’s tour with Dethklok.

It featured a Silverburst body, Gibson USA Burstbuckers, mahogany body and neck, ’60s slim-taper neck, phenolic fingerboard, pearloid dot inlays.

Skwigelf elaborated a little further on his gear of choice in a July 2006 interview with the IGN website:

Q: What kind of gear do you use?

Skwisgaar Skwigelf: Gibson guitars. I stick with my Explorer and Toki usually plays a V, Krank amps- right now I’m using the KRANKENSTIEN, Line 6 pedals, Digidesign plug ins. We gots endorsement deals with alls of them. We can wrecks dem all- they just give us more.

In the same interview, Skwigelf also spoke about what it was like to be the fastest guitar player in the world, and what he does to relax.

Q: The band has both the world’s fastest and second-fastest guitarists alive in it. Is that a bit of overkill?

Skwisgaar Skwigelf: Not at all. As the fastest guitarist, I prefer to have someone a little worse at guitar in the band, like Toki. Because I think you would takes it for granted that I am the best. Like you get used to a room filled with the smell of roses until you go into a room with a rotting corpse smell – then you go back to the roses room and extra appreciates it a greats degrees better.

Q: Any thought about solo projects? What does Dethklok do to relax?

Skwisgaar Skwigelf: We relax with alcohol and Drug Buckets. And everybody’s working on solo stuff always. That’s cool. I’m in a Harry Potter tribute band called “10 Points to Gryffyndor.” Also, I’m in a nudist Civil War styled band called “Depantsification Proclamation.”

If you want to give Dethklok a listen and bask in their brutality, check out The Dethalbum or their DVD Metalocalypse – Season One.