Stephen Carpenter

Stephen Carpenter ( STEF-ən; born August 3, 1970) is an American musician, best known as the co-founder and lead guitarist of the alternative metal band Deftones. He is also a founding member of the instrumental industrial metal side project Sol Invicto, alongside producer/guitarist Richie Londres and percussionist Eric Bobo (Cypress Hill)

His guitar technique makes use of both ringing open strings and dissonant chord voicings, as well as stock power chords in polyrhythms. Carpenter began his musical career with Deftones playing the traditional six-string guitar. After becoming influenced by such bands as Fear Factory and Meshuggah, he began playing a seven-string guitar in the late 1990s. After Deftones' third album White Pony, subsequent releases would be written with seven-strings, until 2010's Diamond Eyes and 2012's Koi No Yokan, which were written with an eight-string guitar. The 2020 Ohms album features a song written with a nine-string guitar.

Carpenter was ranked 4th in Guitar World's The 10 Greatest Metal Guitarists poll.