Finding the right distortion pedal can be a lifelong search, especially when you’re trying to balance doom riffs with thrash precision. For Trip Villain guitarist Josh Musto, that search finally ended with one incredibly rare stompbox: the Zero Fret Serpent.
The pedal wasn’t even something Musto had planned on buying: “I had been searching for the perfect distortion/fuzz pedal for years and finding pedals that almost hit the mark but didn’t quite gel with my playing style,” says Musto.
“I bought a 200w solid state Quilter Overdrive 202 head and by chance picked up a used pedal with no labels at the Does It Doom booth at Desertfest because they said it was a take on the Sunn O))) Life Pedal. It turns out it was the super limited Serpent by Zero Fret, which is now one of my favorite pedals in the world.”
For Musto, the challenge has always been reconciling two seemingly opposite guitar approaches: “My sound in Trip Villain comes from two distinct places: giant fuzzed out doom, and detailed, palm-muted thrash.”
Those influences come directly from two players he considers foundational to his style: “When it comes to doom, I draw a lot of influence from Matt Pike (High On Fire, Sleep) and Steve Brooks (Torche, Floor),” says Musto. “Pike does vibrato when he holds power chords and I’ve always loved the way it makes it sustain—it feels like the guitar is breathing.”
Brooks, meanwhile, completely changed the way Musto thought about low-end guitar: “I think of Steve Brooks’ riff style as the yin to Pike’s yang, in that its most distinctive quality is how clean the execution is. The first time I understood the power of Torche was at their Saint Vitus show in 2018. The song ‘Tarpit Carnivore’ flattened me up against the back wall and completely changed the way I thought about low end.”
That revelation led Musto to experiment with octave effects and lower tunings: “After that show I started messing around with my Boss Super Shifter pedal. When Trip Villain started I lowered my tuning to B Standard and have never looked back. For some of our songs I drop the low string to A, G#, or F#.”
“My double low B was girthy, but still lacked the clean transient and sustain I was craving. At the time I was using a Mesa Boogie Mark V head and messing around with a few distortions and overdrives, but the way the tubes broke up unevenly in the sub bass still left me missing the feeling that my guitar was a literal 808.”
That’s where the Serpent entered the picture: “The combo of the Serpent’s distortion drive at 25% and the Quilter’s clean channel gain at 70% is incredibly clean, barely hums, but gives me insanely powerful pinch harmonics and lets me do all my dumb guy metal moves,” says Musto. “The way I dial it in is to slowly turn the distortion up enough to get a clean pinch harmonic, and back off when it starts humming or feeding back.”
“The kicker of this pedal is the second function, which adds a noise gate and high octave—which is where my doom technique kicks in. The low octave stuff from the Super Shifter sounds super clear, sustains as long as I want, and packs a huge punch in the low mids and sub bass. The addition of the noise gate also lets me get crazy tight with the rhythm, especially when I’m in the sub octave realm.”
The Serpent also transformed another longtime staple on Musto’s pedalboard: “As floored as I was by its synergy with the Super Shifter, the Serpent’s ‘doom button’ also handled my Digitech Bass Envelope Filter pedal perfectly.
“I’ve had it on my board since it was recommended to me by Dave Dreiwitz (Ween) in 2009. Most of its sounds are pretty cartoonish, but there’s one setting I really like that I’ve put on basically every record I’ve ever made. Through the doom setting on the Serpent it hits super hard.”
The result is all over Trip Villain’s new album Dose, where the Serpent serves as the record’s lone source of distortion.
“The Serpent is the only distortion featured on the new Trip Villain Dose,” says Musto. “The best example of the detailed thrash sound is ‘Reign Supreme.’ The best example of the doom sound is ‘Meth Communion.’ The giant caveman riff at 1:42 is one of the first things I wrote when I got this pedal.”
Josh Musto’s Signal Chain
- Dean Stealth (B Standard tuning, Seymour Duncan Dimebucker bridge pickup)
- TC Electronic PolyTune
- Boss Super Shifter
- Boss DD-200 Digital Delay
- Dunlop Cry Baby Mini Wah
- Digitech Bass Envelope Filter
- Zero Fret Serpent
- MXR Kerry King EQ
- MXR Carbon Copy Delay
- Quilter Overdrive 202 head
