Alistair! - Vintage V100TSB, c.2000–2006, Tobacco Sunburst

Some Strays arrive looking as though they’ve spent the last twenty years being used to fight off burglars. Alistair appears to have spent them in a drawing room.

We found this extraordinarily handsome gentleman at auction, and frankly, we’re still slightly confused about what he was doing there.

Alistair is a Vintage V100TSB, dressed appropriately for a gentleman of his standing in Tobacco Sunburst, cream binding and plastics, and enough gold hardware to suggest that subtlety has never been terribly high on his list of priorities.

Despite apparently being somewhere around twenty years old, he is in remarkable condition.

We cannot give Alistair an exact birthday because his serial number is no longer present. Earlier V100s used a serial-number sticker on the rear of the headstock rather than the more permanent markings found on later guitars, and those stickers had an unfortunate habit of disappearing over the years.

His construction and older specification point towards an early-to-mid 2000s example, approximately c.2000–2006, but we are keeping that as an educated estimate rather than pretending Alistair brought his birth certificate to the auction.

Underneath all that gentlemanly tailoring is the classic single-cut recipe.

A substantial mahogany body is joined to a set mahogany neck, giving Alistair the warmth and sustain this style of guitar became famous for, while the bound rosewood fingerboard carries 22 frets and pearloid crown inlays across a familiar 24.75-inch scale.

At the other end, those gloriously ostentatious gold Wilkinson Deluxe machine heads suit him perfectly, while a Tune-O-Matic bridge and stopbar keep everything anchored at the business end.

Alistair is still carrying his original pair of Wilkinson MWVC double-coil humbuckers, controlled in the traditional manner with independent volume and tone controls and a three-way Rhythm/Treble selector.

The neck gives you all the warm, thick blues and classic-rock goodness you would expect from a mahogany set-neck single-cut.

Flick him over to the bridge and the respectable country gentleman remembers that Led Zeppelin exists.

What really stopped us in our tracks, though, was his condition.

There are a handful of tiny marks proving that he has actually existed outside a display cabinet, but look at that back. Look at the neck. Look at the binding. Look at the gold hardware.

Gold hardware normally needs approximately eleven minutes in the presence of a guitarist before it starts looking like an archaeological discovery.

Somehow, Alistair has escaped.

Of course, being remarkably well preserved does not exempt anyone from rehabilitation.

He has been thoroughly cleaned and inspected, his frets have received our usual full level, crown and polish, his fret ends have been attended to, and he has been completely set up before being declared fit for adoption.

The result is a beautifully preserved, likely early-2000s V100 with the reassuring weight, warmth and sustain of the classic set-neck single-cut formula, original Wilkinson humbuckers, period-correct Wilkinson hardware and considerably more dignity than most things that arrive here via an auction house.

Alistair may technically be a Stray, but we’re fairly certain he thinks we’re the staff.

Rescue • Restore • Rehome