I first saw a Daion in 1984 (or 1985?) at Brook Mays Music store in Northpark Mall in Dallas Texas. As I remember, it was the only Daion in the store. My bass at the time was a black Peavey T-40 with a rosewood fingerboard. The Peavey was my first bass (not a bad bass to start on actually). At that time I had been taking lessons for about two years or so and was already playing in bands in high school. Compared to the Peavey, the Daion looked exotic. It was an ‘84 Wine Red Mark XX – a 24 fret nine-piece neck-through bass with all it’s beautiful wood grain exposed under a shiny clear lacquer.

After spotting it, I immediately asked my music instructor, I super kind guy named Scott M, to let me know what he thought. Scott taught lessons at the now long defunct “Frets and Strings” music store on Lovers Lane in Dallas. Scott was a music major at the University of North Texas, incredibly talented, and played a Music Man Stingray and a Steinberger L series (one of the coolest basses ever made in my opinion). Scott gave it a thumbs up, but I think he had reservations as he had never heard of Daion - which would be a repeating theme in my life for the next 30 years.

My Mark XX-b, still with stock bridge, but already had EMG pickups and a phase switch located between the knobs

I sold the Peavey with the help of an ad in the local newspaper, and I used that money, plus other funds (probably a combination of what I earned at my job the time and with some help from my parents) and bought the Daion Mark XX-b. Though the bass was built in 1984 (by serial number), I’m pretty sure I purchased it in 1985 (my junior year in high school). I played the Daion in high school and college bands. Because I spent a lot of time hanging out in the music store where I took lessons, I was always looking at the display cases, and ended up modifying the Daion. Yes, I know that’s a bit sacrilegious to Daion purists, but I was in high school and naive. The stock P/J pickups were replaced with EMGs and I had a brass colored Khaler tremolo fitted that matched the other brass hardware nicely (dude – my bass has a whammy!). I gave the old parts to the music store’s repair shop. In retrospect, I wish I had kept the parts – today I have plenty of restoration projects in need of parts!

"Table 4 Six” - my high school band. The girl on the far right went on to a successful music career (#1 single on Billboard and a Grammy). Can you guess her name?

College was the peak of my playing. I could sight read music well which allowed me to play bass in one of the musicals at college. For the next decade after college, the Daion spent most of its life in its case as I relocated frequently for work, spending time in Texas, Missouri, Arizona, and Michigan. Beside the occasional noodling, I wasn’t playing much during this period. By the late 2000s my life started to settle down – I was married, had bought my first house and in 2008 my daughter was born.

Playing in college - I’m pretty sure I’m channeling John Taylor of Duran Duran

Playing a keg (beer) party in college and not taking ourselves too serously. The Mark XX-b had the Kahler tremolo at this point

Right around that time I somehow found out there was a group of folks trying to get a neighborhood band together. Unfortunately, the Daion had developed some electrical wiring issues and was barely functioning. I pivoted to a Steinberger Spirit bass (all wood construction, bolt on neck, Select EMG passive pickups) that I had bought for my step daughter. She never took lessons seriously and had abandoned it. I used that for about several months of heavy playing with the band. We started to gig locally. I was so happy I could play and, just maybe, I wasn’t the weakest member of the group.

The band began to take up a lot of time as we worked up our set list to play gigs. Every weekend I was practicing and rehearsing with the band or playing out live. At that point my wife had to step in – we had a newborn daughter and she needed help on the weekends. I quit the band. It was the right thing to do. The only positive out of my short stint in the neighborhood band was that I was back into music and playing bass again after a long absence.

Since the beginning, every time I showed someone my Mark XX-b I got asked the same question – “What’s a Daion?” In 25 years of ownership I had never seen another Daion instrument or met anyone that knew anything about the brand. Sometime in the early 2010s I started to try to find out more about my bass. By this time the internet made things a lot easier. I soon realized there were other models – both electric and acoustic. My quest (ok, my journey into collecting Daions), started with the goal of trying to find another Mark XX bass. I wanted to see and experience what my bass was like stock.

Fast forward to 2020, I’ve enjoyed hunting and collecting Daions from all over the world – the United States, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, Italy, France, Russian Federation, Germany, Greece, Sweden, Denmark, and Japan (where Daion was born). At this point in my journey it’s time to reverse direction and sell down the collection. As I do this, using Daion.com, I’ll be cataloging and documenting the models and the brand to share with others. This will be a very slow process, so be patient!

Lastly, I would like to thank all the members of the Facebook group “Daions Online” for the sense of community and collective knowledge. I would also like to send a special “thank you” to the group moderators Michael Bechmann and Michael Callahan for their friendship and encouragement to take these early first steps with Daion.com.

My Daion Journey