Fender Neck Roasted Maple Strat

Went over the frets with a fret rocker, expecting to do some fret leveling, but to my surprise not a single fret was uneven (which is almost unbelievable).

Nut obviously needs to be filed since it's fitted with basically a slotted blank. Had to take off about 2mm in height, round off the corners and file the slots, which is all to be expected.

Fret ends could have been a bit better, but they won't catch or scratch your hand.

Fit like a glove in my MIM Standard, replacing the old 21 fret, 9½ radius, medium fretted neck.

This is a really, really nice MIM neck. With just one thing to watch out for.
I'm building a Partscaster at the moment and wanted something a little different than rosewood or Pau Ferro. Naturally, at such a price, I thought I'd give a roasted maple neck a try.

I don't usually like maple necks as the high gloss finish on the rear of the neck is something I don't enjoy. However, this neck has a wonderful satin finish, sanded perfectly. Really nicely done, the jumbo frets are all perfect, can't complain there. Fit was perfect with an aftermarket body.

One thing I would warn potential buyers of is the fact that this neck comes with an uncut nut. The nut is marked (actually barely marked on the top two strings) and far, far too high. This meant I had to scrabble around trying to find a set of nut files. Nut files aren't cheap, and you only use them a few times, so bear this in mind.

The nut was far too high as well. After some fruitless filing - a lot of fruitless filing - I decided to replace the nut with a Tusq one. Of course, when you replace a nut, if you want a good setup, you still need recourse to a set of nut files.

I'm really, really happy with this neck and can recommend it to anyone, but it's not a drop in replacement (hence one star off) - you'll need to be experienced in cutting nuts, and they're never easy to get right. The rest of the setup went perfectly, you'll need a 3/16" Allen key for the neck relief adjustment as this is an MIM neck and not the usual 1/8" US pattern.

There are some out there who claim that roasted maple is more brittle to work with, and can easily ding or dent: my tuners went on fine and fitting twin string trees presented no problem, in fact, it's really nice to work with.

Highly recommended (with the above caveat) and unbeatable at the price. If you want a high quality, well priced, slightly different neck, you'll be very happy with this one.