1983 Daion Strat-Style Solidbody Electric Guitar

My Daion-collecting friend Rick got this from a buddy of his in New Zealand. It was "planed" back with this fellow and has sat mouldering on my racks for the last few months. I finally took a day to work a bit on random electric projects and this Japanese-made guy finally got done.

It'd had all sorts of bad wiring decisions made under the hood and the whole rat's nest of amateur repairs needed to be stripped away and replaced to get it back to sorts. After that it just needed a level/dress of the frets, new strings, some fussing with the neck joint, and a good setup. Now it's playing like butter.

I'm not sure how much of this guitar is original and how much is replaced. It looks like it always had SSS/Strat-style pickups mounted, but the coverplate on the rear of the guitar was recessed clumsily and looks entirely replaced. The front looks good, though.

I changed the wiring to a simpler 5-way switch and master volume/tone setup with a jack on the front. This still has a side-jack housing with the Tele-style cup installed but it was drilled for one of those tiny, weird old Japanese jacks and I knew I wanted this to be practical so I just simplified the setup and left it unused.

The pickups had thrice-spliced lead wire, but the remaining original wire looked like period Japanese stuff, so I'm guessing they're original to the guitar.

The neck joint on this is terrible and just as wonky as old Mosrite designs, but I've managed to get it firm enough and shimmed-up enough to work. In the long run I will probably replace the missing neckplate and perhaps sink a couple more bolts into it to stabilize it further.

The knobs are replacements, too -- the originals would've been black Strat-style ones.