Daion Performer Telecaster

Made in Japan around late 70s/early 80s by the look of it. It's basically a very faithful Telecaster copy, black with a black scratch plate so it looks COOL. Got the standard Tele bridge & neck pickups, 3-way selector switch, 1 tone, 1 volume, nothing fancy but everything where it should be. You know, like a Tele. Not sure what it's made of, but it's pretty heavy, solid enough to convince. Neck is also solid, well set & straight as a straight thing. String-thru-body bridge setup, again perfectly sound, but unfortunately let down by the atrocious tuners, which are sticking out at all kinds of crazy angles from the headstock - they look like Shane McGowan's teeth - & make the thing almost (but not quite) impossible to tune. Still, one of the better copies I have seen - I was looking for an interesting piece of junk, something cheap but serviceable, perhaps worth hot-rodding at some stage, and I found it in this guitar. Daion are not around any more, but they have a good rep and are held to have been one of the better Japanese guitar makers at the end of the 70s. And I think that if you want a good copy of something classic, then go for a Tele copy every time - they're simple, no-nonsense guitars and I guess that makes them easier to copy well. Not loaded with exciting features but then Teles were never really about features. Input jack, strap buttons, pots and stuff are all completely fine; the guitar has been well looked after. Oh yes plus I got a free gig bag and set of strings thrown in.

I play a few styles from dirty blues (think Jon Spencer) to space rock (think Boredoms) to abstract noise/ambient (think whatever). This guitar handles all these and more, with the help of Boss overdrive & digital delay boxes through an old Laney Pro Tube 100 amp. Unlike a lot of cheap Jap copies, this guitar has a good clean sound, in fact it produces a perfectly reasonable facsimile of the classic Tele sounds, from bright twang on the bridge to rich mellow/jazzy on the neck pickup. You can also get this spiky, rattly swampy garage sound that I love, not unlike The Fall in their heyday (late 70s/early 80s of course). Distorted is where you realise that you're playing a cheapy: the neck pickup hums quite loudly and overall it doesn't quite have the grunt of the genuine article, could do with a bit more sustain. But you can control the feedback and overall it does the trick on maximum gain or clean.

Action is really good, nice & even, all the way up the neck, although the nut is worn & needs replacing, and this causes the odd fret buzz. Pickup adjustment fine; like I said the tuners are the only seriously dodgy thing about this guitar, they bring the rating down to a 5.

Who knows but I'd say this guitar will stand up to a fair bit of punishment. Everything is very solid & sturdily assembled. I'd use it live without backup, but then my approach to live playing is that accidents & fuck-ups should be welcomed as a challenge to your resourcefulness & creativity.

None of this applies.

I have been playing for nearly 30 years & I know what I like. After spending a ridiculous amount of time searching for a decent junkshop guitar, I can say that it's actually hard to find something cheap that isn't just shit. For $250 you almost always get something truly horrible. So having found this one, I'd be sad to lose it because good cheapies are pretty rare. Best thing about it is simply playability: the thing feels great and sounds fine. No kidding, I have played Fender Teles that I liked less than this one. At first I thought I wanted a cheap guitar because it wouldn't matter if I destroyed it while trying to get an interesting sound out of it, but in this case I think I'll look after it & do the necessary modifications - new tuners first, then maybe stick some beefier pickups on it. Someone had told me that Daion was one Japanese brand worth keeping an eye out for - along with Fernandez and Tokai (70s models), and this guitar makes me think he was right.