The ULTIMATE Vintage Stratocaster!

Transcription:

Hi folks, back in the vault with Daniel and we've got probably one of the best-looking Strats I've ever seen. I absolutely love this.

This, to me, I'm, I'm between two, kinds for me, my personal dream Strat would be this or like the Mark Knoffler red one. But this is absolutely stunning.

Yeah, it's kind of, you know, the quintessential Strat; when, when, uh, when a lot of people close their eyes and they think of a Strat, they think of a maple neck, sunburst, single ply, white guard, fifties.

Yeah, rock and roll machine, which is exactly what this is.

And, uh, I love seeing guitars like this because it just reminds me of why Relic guitars exist.

Yes, because this is what all Relic guitars want to be when they grow up.

Yeah. Um, it's just, it, I mean, look at this thing. It is beat up, up and down. By the way, I'm glad we're showing this. We're talking about this because it's important to understand that the vault is not just for case queens.

It's not just for pristine.

Yeah, yeah. You know, you know, like, uh, time capsule examples, uh, we have things in here that we consider to be some of the finest examples of something, and finest... it is a guitar.

Yeah. So the thing is, if it's an amazing playing and sounding guitar, um, it's gonna be in here.

Yeah. And this is one of these guitars, it is. I mean, you look at it and you, you know what it's going to be.

Yeah. Uh, you plug it in and it delivers exactly what you think it's going to deliver.

Yeah. Um, it's the quintessential Strat. It is a fifties, you know, maple neck Strat with, and, and by the way, if you look, you can see it's, it's three-tone sunburst, so it's already post-58.

It is a '58, but what I mean is it's post early '58 when they transitioned to the three-tone sunburst color.

Mm-hmm. Um, and the reason why I mentioned that is because that kind of places this guitar in a pretty unique window of time when the pickups of these guitars were definitely different.

Yeah, it was no longer the early fifties. By way, there is nothing wrong with early fifties Fender pickups, they're fantastic, obviously. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Um, but they were winding them a little bit hotter. I don't know the magnitude difference, I don't know exactly the reason why, but these pickups already fall in kind of the next generation of Fender Strat pickups.

And these, some people think that these are the best pickups, uh, the best era.

Right, okay. They're hotter, they're somehow warmer. The earlier stuff is a little bit, um, a little bit brighter, perhaps.

Mm-hmm. But, you know, it's silly because every time I talk about this stuff, you, you, you, you have to always mention that it all depends on the player, right?

Yeah, I can make any of these guitars sound horrible. Um, but, and, and you know, the right-hand technique and can, can, and, you know, can bring up some of these qualities that I'm talking about more than with some players than others, but the player being the same. Um, these pickups are definitely different.

Yeah.

There's gotta be some stories to this guitar as well. I mean, we've got the cigarette burn up there, so it's, you assume it's been played live a lot.

Oh, not only that, there's a signature on the back of this guitar.

There is. Yeah. And, um, that, that alone, uh, uh, we can't confirm that it belonged to this person, necessarily. I, I don't know how it got there. I bought this guitar as part of a very large collection. Uh, the very large collection only had four guitars. Just to give you an idea, this person had the most incredible collection of Marshalls I've ever seen. And you'll be seeing that soon. It's mind-blowing stuff.

But if a guy who has that many amps only has four guitars, you know that this guitar is very good.

Yeah. Now he has other guitars that are modern that he's keeping. He has a couple other vintage guitars that he's keeping as well. But, um, he has very few guitars compared to amps. And this, this is, you understand why as soon as you pick this up.

Yeah, it is just a great, great Strat.

Yeah. I mean those, those of you who are wondering, it says Otis Rush.

Mm-hmm. Now we can't confirm anything. Right. Um, he was a lefty player, um, which would, you know, this is a righty guitar.

Yeah. And the wear on the, on the guitar would suggest that it was not played by a lefty. But the thing is that he was, he was a lefty player that played with the low E on, on the bottom. So, or on the top, in other words, really with the, like the guitar, so upside down, right?

Yeah, essentially.

Right, okay. Which means that the wear pattern could actually still be correct.

Yeah. Um, but who knows? The point is the guitar was played a lot. Um, yeah. And, and you can, you can feel it, it because of that it, you can see the wear on the board. That's a lot of wear, which means those frets would've been gone. It was refretted, that that's one of the main and only mods that this guitar has. It was refretted with bigger frets. It has a new nut, and because of that, it just, it plays beautifully.

It does play very good action. I was playing it the other day. It feels wonderful.

Yeah. And again, those pickups are, are truly magical.

Yeah, it's just one of those guitars, one of those windows, one of those eras of these, yeah, guitars that are just spectacular. Oh, that's another mod. I'm glad you did that five-way, the original three-way is in the case, in the original case, but it was changed to five-way, which makes so much sense.

Yeah. If it's a player Strat, if it's a guitar, if it's a Strat that was played a lot, you can almost bet that it was changed to a five-way.

Yeah. And that sounds phenomenal. It does, doesn't it?

Yeah. Not that you can tell by me just doing that, that noise and pointing at it, but that anyone who does get the chance to play this...

Yeah, it does sound good.

Anyway, such a cool guitar.

Definitely. You know, I don't know, to me that's, I, if I had a Strat, that's what I would want it to be like.

Yeah. I, I'll be, I'm with you that, like I said, from my own selfish point of view, I've always loved the Mark Knopfler kind of red one as well. But when you, like you said, when you think of a Strat, that is it, you know, and I love, like you said, it's the guitar that a Relic guitar...

Wants to be when it grows up. A lot of people look at heavy Relic instruments and go, "A guitar could never look like that." Well, yeah, it can.

Apparently, it can.

Yeah, yeah. Uh, Daniel, thanks for explaining the story behind arguably one of the best Strats I've ever come across, uh, looks-wise, I mean, you stunned it. Um, but again, we get trades all the time. People at home, if you wanna trade stuff in or, you know, you travel the country looking for these gems and we get them here at The Vault.

Yeah. We just picked this up from Colorado, so, yeah, there you go.

Cool. Um, so keep an eye out for more videos from The Vault. Of course, folks featuring stunning items like this. In the meantime, like, and subscribe and we'll see you later.