had a hard on to build a nice 7.5 inch ar pistol. bit the bullet (no pun intended) and bought a complete BCM lower and stripped upper. pondered my barrel choices and decided on the noveske diplomat.
have read some horror stories in the archive section here about getting the pinned gas block off to install the barrel nut but went ahead with this choice.
received the barrel a couple of weeks ago and stashed it away until I decided what free float handguard I wanted, went with the YHM basic free float one.
after I got it in the mail I decided to start lubing up the pin holding on the gas block to ease its extraction based again on what I read in the archive section about what a bitch this task is.
the barrel I got the pin was not installed in the gas block, hurray! it was in the box with the gas tube. undid the set screw, a little lube to make things easier, a couple of starting whacks with a nylon mallet, and off it came. no misguided hammer blows hitting the block, no scratches forcing it off the barrel, etc. piece of cake. hoping noveske is shipping all their diplomat barrels like this now.
pic is of dry build just to see how I like it
<a href="http://s131.photobucket.com/user/type247/media/IMG_2051_zpstt5pxjr7.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i131.photobucket.com/albums/p290/type247/IMG_2051_zpstt5pxjr7.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo IMG_2051_zpstt5pxjr7.jpg"/></a>

My 12.5" came like that. Cannot complain cause its stupid accurate