Go with anilines, and dilute them in water (demineralized), for a lot of material you can build a bath with a plastic sheet and literally soak all the strips in one shot.
To help resist light fading overtime a little ammonia (like a teaspoon for each liter of water) gives good results.

Another way its to actually bleach the wood to obtain lighter strips, its done very very often on furniture to facilitate the staining process after (but what im talking about here is to keep the strips a lighter color).
You can use chlorine (get the pool stuff, its cheap and strong and a little goes a long way, the household bleach isnt that concentrated) requires a ventilated area though and can leave a sort of greyish hue and can affect actual staining after, or the peroxide kinds of bleach (actually two parts: hydrogen peroxide and sodium hydroxide, unlike chlorine they cant discolor anilines and probably other dyes so some fun effects can be obtained with this bleach) this one is your best bet, or go with oxalic acid (actually this one would brighten the wood rather than changing its natural color, takes away watermarks or weathering mostly, but the wood would still look a different somewhat lighter shade).

Beside those solutions consider all natural stuff like coffee for example to get a dark color.