DIAMOND – HALCYON ZB-FR
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DIAMOND – HALCYON ZB-FR

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THE WAY OF THE FIST

This guitar is based on Diamond’s Halcyon design, a ‘Superstrat’ type with aggressive cutaways and some pretty extreme and eye-catching bevelling. The body is made of mahogany with a flame maple top. It has a set maple neck carrying 24 frets on an ebony fingerboard. The scale length is 25.5”, so we’re not talking baritone here: standard Strat length. Now that Diamond has completed the transition from DBZ Guitars to Diamond, it’s great to see them really pushing their unique branding and style. The electronics are quite stripped back: there are master volume and master tone controls and a three-way pickup selector, with not a coil split or onboard boost in sight. Bathory’s pickup set of choice is the Seymour Duncan Pegasus and Sentient, a pair of passive humbuckers which were originally designed for 7 and 8-string progressive metal guitarists. They’re moderate in output, the idea being that if you’re going to load them up with mega-gain you’ll retain the clarity and definition of your phrasing and note choices.

 

PUNCH IT

Bathory has gone for a slightly thicker neck shape than you might expect from this guitar’s shred-friendly looks but not so beefy that it feels out of place. It strikes a good balance between chord and solo-friendly feels. The bridge pickup is very articulate and crisp, somewhere around the voicing of a Seymour Duncan JB but not as fat and much lower in output. It seems to knit power chords together firmly while emphasising the individual notes in more complex chords. It responds almost like a single coil (minus the ‘string zing’) in terms of translating your single-note phrasing. The Sentient is a sort of hybrid ‘vintage/modern’- sounding pickup, blending the smoothness of a vintage PAF type with the detail of a more high-powered neck pickup.

 

GOT YOUR SIX

Although the inlay is quite distinctive, you don’t need to be a FFDP fan to enjoy this guitar or find your own sound with it. The playability is great (the Floyd didn’t quite return to pitch until it was tweaked a bit but that’s not a construction issue and the ‘Black Moonrise’ finish – which fades from a sort of beige to a deep coffee hue – is really beautiful.