Do you know that Kirk Hammett has a boutique effect pedal company with his mate? I sure didn’t know that. But apparently he does. And apparently their KHDK Electronics Dark Blood distortion pedal is pretty damn gnarly sounding according to the chunky tone that Ola Englund gets in this gear test video.
As far as the signal chain goes here, Ola is running the Dark Blood pedal through the effects loop of his signature Randall Satan amp. He’s then got the amp pushing into a Hesu 2×12 cab, which is mic’d with a SM58. So nothing too fancy. But gottdamn it sounds tiiight.
How tough does that sound?! I mean, Ola can make anything sound filthy with his sabre-sharp playing, but this tone is golden even beyond that.
I had a squiz at Ola’s other video with the Dark Blood, and it turns out that the pedal has a nifty, built-in, single knob noise gate. Very handy. Considering that you’d probably need a noise gate for it anyway, having it built-in would definitely save some footprint space. And it’s a pretty smart move from a product differentiation standpoint, I don’t think many other distortion pedals have that feature.
Nevertheless, the real key feature of the Dark Blood is the “Doom” knob. Which is an entire dial dedicated to filling out the level “Doom” in your tone. Genius! (Or maybe it’s just a bass knob?).
Check out the other features and full specs at the KHDK Electronics website. And for the one guy not following Ola’s Youtube channel, go subscribe over here.
