Removing semi transparency from brush

Illustrator has cleaner vector-based lines. I'd import the PLACE, and TRACE it in Illustrator. 

Thank you for the responses. Just to clarify, the image is of the brush used on the project background in the colours I want. I looked into the brush files I downloaded and found that they came with PNG and PSD files of each brush. (this would have been a lot easier if I looked there to start with)

Can I just use Fill to make the whole thing black (the middle part isn't entirely black either) and then Define Brush Preset to make it into a new brush? Thank you for bearing with me, I'm not familiar with this area of Photoshop. Always new things to learn, even for an old egg like me!

Another way to create the brush would be to start with a white bg, and put down one sample of the brush with blade. Add a black and white adjustment layer to make it totally black and white. Adjust the adjustment layer to your liking. If it's too stark, add a little gaussian blur to soften the edges.

Maybe you could just use a different blending mode when painting with it.

It's not going to be easy to get a full black version of that graphic because of the flat tones it has. Plus the circles have even less contrast with the background, so you couldn't build it up with copied layers without losing the circles.  It's an easy graphic to recreate from scratch using your graphic as a template, so that's the way to go IMO

However, the OCD that is part of ALL content creators means I can't live with the non symmetric nature of the original, so I would absolutely need to fix that.

Yes, Bojan is right - yor brush should be deifined as black and white image. White background is transparent and black is opaque