5 October 2024 is not a date Tetrarch guitarist Diamond Rowe will be forgetting in a hurry.
Ever since she was 12 years old, she had the dream of having her own line of signature guitars and handing them out to the musicians who were shaping her into the groundbreaking player she was determined to grow up to be. Backstage after Korn headlined the BMO Stadium in Los Angeles on that first weekend of October, she was able to make her dream a reality.
She presented Brian ‘Head’ Welch, who pioneered the nu-metal sound alongside James ‘Munky’ Shaffer in Korn, with one of her newly launched Pro Series Monarkh DR12MG models, and described the experience on social media as one of the biggest ‘pinch me’ moments of her life so far. It was her opportunity to thank the metal heroes who had paved and showed her the way, one that she grabbed with both hands.
“I asked Jackson about this, explaining that I wouldn’t be here without the musicians who inspired me in the first place,” she tells MusicRadar, just a few days later. “Korn had their 30th anniversary show and my guitar was launched the same week, so I took one over for Head and handed it to him after the set. It was an awesome experience. Honestly, one of the greatest moments of my life.”
You could say the Tetrarch guitarist has a lot to be celebrating right now. Her debut new guitar made history, not once but twice – as the first signature Jackson for a female player, and as the first artist model for a black female performing heavy metal for the industry as a whole.
Those ‘pinch me’ moments are coming through thick and fast, and if you’ve listened to any of her work, you’ll be able to see it’s thoroughly deserved.
“Life is pretty crazy right now!” she grins. “It’s one of those things where I was talking to my Jackson rep Mike Tempesta and telling him it looked like I was the first female signature artist at Jackson. And then someone else who works with me pointed out that I was the first black female in heavy music with my own signature guitar. This is all very cool for me, that my passion brought me to this point.”
As a result of the new release, younger generations of black female players will have someone to look up to – a beacon of inspiration they can see themselves in and relate to in perhaps more ways than one. This kind of representation and visibility can only be a good thing, Diamond agrees, though in terms of her own journey into metal, she hasn’t given such matters too much thought.
As she goes on to explain, she was able to thrive in a community of like-minded individuals, her fellow music fans now standing as family.
“I got into heavy metal the same way as everyone else,” she says. “I found the first band I loved, just like we all do, and started going to all the shows. I followed that passion all the way to this point.
“When I was younger, I never thought about being different. I just loved the music so much and felt so comfortable that it quickly became my home.
“But I also know there are other people who did notice that they didn’t really see many people that looked like them. I would go see Metallica or Korn or whoever, and I’d probably be one of only three or four black people in the whole place. But I never thought about that because I felt so at home. I knew these were my people, even if my skin colour was different.”
It goes without saying that the Jackson Pro Series Monarkh DR12MG is a metal machine tailor-made for the earth-conquering tones Tetrarch are known for.
It comes with the 81/85 active EMG set favoured by high gain bruisers like Zakk Wylde and a highly dependable EverTune bridge, finished in a blood red variant advertised as Dark Rose.
It’s exactly the kind of instrument Rowe has sworn by throughout her six-string journey, so the design aspect didn’t require too much back and forth with the Jackson camp…
“Different people have their own approaches for signatures,” she admits. “I wanted mine to be a full representation of what I’m comfortable with and what I’ve been playing for years. I’m more of a ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!’ kind of person, sometimes to a fault!
“This guitar had to nail my sound, so I needed my EMG 81/85 set with the EverTune bridge I’ve been using for six years now.
“As for the singlecut thing, my first guitar was a Les Paul Standard. From that point on, I’ve only really played singlecuts on stage or in the studio.
“I might have tracked demos at home or done an extra layer with something else, but I’m all about the singlecuts. I wanted to avoid flame or quilt tops, because I see them all the time. So I started looking around and came up with the idea of a poplar burl veneer, which Jackson agreed to.
“For the most part, the specs were easy. The only thing I wanted to experiment with was the scale length. My signature is 25.5” which is a little longer than most Les Paul-style guitars.”
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