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JUSTIN AND DAN HAWKINS FROM THE DARKNESS HAVE UNVEILED THEIR VERY FIRST SIGNATURE OVERDRIVE UNDER THE NAME
Until now, The Darkness have rarely dabbled in the world of signature gear – from a very small run of Gibson Les Paul Customs made for Justin Hawkins and a handful of lucky collectors back in 2004 to the singer/guitarist’s Laney JH3000 amplifiers of 2021, which were only produced for the man himself. That all changes this year with the launch of Hawkins Brothers Audio and the Permission To Land overdrive, capturing all the world-conquering tones from the album that put them on the map.
As well as bespoke artwork from Chiara Mazzoni, the pedals will feature dual paths for Justin and Dan, respectively – one more distorted and high-gain and the other more crunchy and amp-like, which can then be isolated or blended together. There’s also a bypass button, a three-band EQ, a button to engage the Lead Boost and a LoFi switch for that instantly recognisable I Believe In A Thing Called Lovevintage radio intro. Here, the brothers explain more about how the idea came about and what to expect…
How did plans for this pedal take shape
? Dan: Funnily enough, it was you [TG’s Amit Sharma] who put us in touch with David Karon from Distortion Inc. and [Kirk Hammett co-owned company] KHDK, saying he had a proposal. Then we brought in our guitar tech Ian ‘Softy’ Norfolk to help it move along. We were sent some of their existing pedals and the first thing I noticed was that these guys make some serious stuff. I was impressed and it made sense to look into what we could do together.
Once you decided it was an idea worth pursuing, what exactly did you hope to achieve with it?
Justin: The idea of it was to simulate the sounds from Permission To Land. There are two different sides, there’s the Dan side and then my side, which was really important. It needed to have not just one but both of our sounds built in.
Dan: That was the gist, to get all of the sounds from our first album out of one pedal. As well as helping people mimic our sounds, it had to be good enough to go beyond that and become its own thing
