BARKETTA MOON
The body and the neck are both made of mahogany and the fingerboard is rosewood with 22 frets. The electronics layout is very simple: one volume control, one tone control, a three-way pickup selector switch, and a pair of passive humbuckers. The bridge is a standard two-point fulcrum non-locking vibrato unit which seems to operate smoothly enough, although this style can’t quite compete with a well-maintained Floyd Rose for tuning stability.
PICK ME UP
The tone of the bridge pickup is slightly scooped in the middle-most frequencies of the midrange but with a neat little bump in the high mids, edgy but not brittle treble, and tight bass. It doesn’t feel super-high-output, which means you can dial in plenty of extra gain without sacrificing clarity. It’s great for power chord chunkin’ or for single-note leads. The neck pickup is a little darker, lacking a little pick attack and top end detail but nice for bluesy sustained leads or for clean chording. It would be nice to have coil splitting available to extract a little more flexibility out of this guitar and particularly to bring in a bit more high end for neck-position tones.
This isn’t one of Diamond’s top-of-the-line guitars so you’d be forgiven for expecting the odd workmanship issue. Aside from a few rough fret ends there’s nothing particularly negative to report. The ‘LT SERIES’ logo is engraved through the removable protective film of the truss rod cover which makes it look messy until you realise you’re just looking at frayed bits of film that you’re meant to take off when you get the guitar home anyway.
READY TO ROCK
Overall this is a well-built guitar that will easily adapt to a multitude of styles, although it looks more suited to the rockier side of things. It’s a shame the neck pickup doesn’t quite seem to match the bridge one, but there’s still plenty to love about this instrument.
For more information visit www.dynamicmusic.com.au
