Dan Hawkins

"And there’s the practicality. I have a lovely 1964 Epiphone Casino that I used on the album, but I bash guitars very hard – I have terrible technique where I hit the guitar as much as the strings! So I wouldn’t take my Casino on the road – I’d probably punch a hole straight through it. So I’ll always be a Les Paul man, live," says Dan Hawkins, in this interview.

"This is a guitar known as Sputnik. Belonged to Neil X from Sigue Sigue Sputnik...It's an awesome sounding guitar and this guitar was actually the one that lead me on to Les Pauls many years ago," says Dan Hawkins, at 8:25.

Dan Hawkins discussed this guitar in Premier Guitar. He has Grover tuners on his 2000 Les Paul Standard. His brother, Justin Hawkins, bought him this guitar when "The Darkness" started. He has 2 guitars of the same year, same model. One of them is tuned to standard and one is tuned to Drop D (DADGBE).

"'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“This was originally made for Jimmy Page, but it was too heavy for him, so basically I phoned Gibson in 2003 and said, ‘I want one of these, can you get me one?’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.”

"'Amid all the power rock, there is one very ’80s power ballad, “Love Is Not the Answer.”'

'That was very layered. Electric 12-strings, Gibson J-200 acoustics played in four different capo positions, core rhythm ES-335, four Les Paul rhythm tracks, a Strat solo, an outro Les Paul solo… It was a chance just to do anything. It’s our idea of those ’80s power ballads. No-one’s telling us what to do, they never have been, so it was guitar overload. For one track, why not?'" reads this interview with Dan Hawkins.

In the music video for "I believe in a thing called love" Dan Hawkins can be seen using his Gretsch G6128TBEE Elliot Easton Duo Jet Black with the pickguard removed.