Fortin Meshuggah Signature High Gain Distortion

The Fortin Meshuggah Signature High Gain Distortion is a compact high gain distortion pedal built as a signature pedal for the Swedish metal band Meshuggah. Guitar Pedal X's Stefan Karlsson, reviewing it in his 2025 roundup of compact high gain and heavy metal pedals, wrote that it "brilliantly delivers their incredibly tight and highly tuned distortion profile," and listed it at $350¹. It sits in Fortin's line of preamp-style distortion pedals alongside the Fortin Natas and Fortin KALI, and is covered in more depth on the site's Fortin Meshuggah page.

Controls

The pedal carries an unusually deep control set for a compact distortion, with active EQ bands and voicing switches shaping where the gain sits¹.

The Kill footswitch is worth noting for players: rather than a simple clean boost, it adds one more gain stage on the fly, which is how the pedal reaches its heaviest settings¹.

What reviewers said

Guitar Pedal X placed the pedal among its 2025 selection of compact high gain and heavy metal pedals, and Stefan Karlsson's verdict was emphatic:

The pedal carries a list price of $350 USD¹.

Background: the Meshuggah amp connection

The pedal belongs to a signature partnership between Fortin and Meshuggah that also produced a 50W signature amplifier head. On Fortin's artist page for Meshuggah guitarist Fredrik Thordendal, the maker describes the amp as designed to be a "single-channel fire breather" that retains note definition despite sickening amounts of gain². That emphasis on keeping note definition at extreme gain levels is the same territory the signature pedal works in, with its active EQ and grind and girth voicing controls shaping a tight, focused distortion¹.

For a wider look at where this pedal sits among its peers, see the site's pages on Distortion Pedals and Preamp Pedals.

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