The Darkness – Easter is Cancelled (Deluxe)

"'And you have a Gibson Custom Shop “Black Beauty” Les Paul especially made for Jimmy Page – but he returned it because it was too heavy for him? And you got it?'

'Yep. I call that my “Love is More Than a Feeling” guitar. It wasn’t on that first album track, but it’s on both other albums since and live for the song. I had the Bigsby taken off, and a hardtail put on. I had a Fishman Powerbridge pickup put on so I could switch to an acoustic sound,'" reads this interview.

From MusicRadar:

“This was originally made for Jimmy Page, but it was too heavy for him, so basically I phoned Gibson in 2003 and said, ‘I want one of these, can you get me one?’ And Pat Foley, who was the head there at the time, he said, ‘Well, you’re in luck, because I’ve just had one come back in.’ So Jimmy Page had his ’57 stolen in 197-whatever. So he had one made to the exact same spec, because he wanted one of those again for when they reunited for that show. So they did it, sent this to him - but it was too heavy because they did it to the original spec. And it’s a monster, because it’s got so much hardware on it, it’s not chambered, and it’s got a big neck. So they built him a chambered one and they gave this one to me. The bridge pickup is out of one of Angus Young’s SGs, so the original Burstbucker can’t compete with the 498s or whatever they are in my [main Les Paul] ‘Dune’. It’s already a much brighter guitar because there’s so much metal on it. But one of my techs was given the pickup by them, so it ended up in here. I use it for Love Is Only A Feeling and the Christmas song, when we play that.”

In a photo shared from Hawkins in this September 12, 2012 Twitter post, the Boss SD-1 is visible in his pedalboard. It also featured in this September 17, 2021 promotional Guitar article.

Another exponent of the SD-1 is Dan Hawkins of platinum-selling rockers, The Darkness whose huge riffs and sinuous lead work owe much to the humble mellow yellow wonder. From the classic power chords of Permission To Land to their new album Motorheart the mighty SD-1 is front and centre.

“It was my first overdrive pedal when I was about 13 years old and that was it,” Dan tells us. “It was the ultimate overdrive sound right away for me and I will always have one on my board. It’s been on every album we’ve ever recorded – Love Is Only A Feeling was an SD-1 and a BOSS compressor a Space Echo – and it’s quite unusual for me to play lots of lead guitar on a Darkness song. I don’t know what it is about the SD-1 but it’s just got vibes. They nailed it didn’t they?”

This track is split into three sections. I like that the dynamics are really extreme. The verses were played on my 2000 Les Paul standard through a 1987x Marshall with the heavy section at the end of the verses switching to a Friedman Smallbox fronted with a TS9. The jangly chorus section starts with my 1964 Epiphone Casino through my 1964 AC30 and returns to the 1987x for the way out. The outro is a mix of Smallbox and 1987x.