Wizard wrote:
Is it better to have a stiffer neck or a springier neck? (as with the quartersawn one piece maple which must be expensive)
There is no "better" or "worse" in this. A lot of it is perception and a lot is technical. Woodworking principles will tell you that laminated wood will generally be stronger and less flexible than one single piece of wood. Quarter-sawn maple (the grain of the wood runs from the fretboard to the back of the neck) is more desirable for one-piece neck construction due to the strength and stability that this grain structure brings to a neck. I stand corrected but I think quartersawn is more expensive because you loose more useable wood when they saw it like this at the mill.
On vintage Fender Strats they tried to minimize the effect of the fretboard/neck lamination by making the glued-on fretboard a veneer, so that it is curved and follows the radius of the neck and is no wider than say 2mm. Nowadays they just glue a solid "slab" of flat rosewood onto a flat slab of maple and machine it - cheaper to make but a with more noticeable effect on tone, when compared to a single-piece maple neck. There is also the matter of the various ways in which a truss rod is inserted into the neck that will play a part in the sound.
When it comes to personal preference I like a one-piece maple neck with a skunk stripe at the back (where the truss rod is inserted) and I prefer the adjusting screw to be at the heel (makes for a cleaner headstock but is more difficult to adjust). Personally, if I'm going to put a humbucker in the bridge position of a Strat-style guitar, then I'll fit a one-piece maple neck since to my ear the humbucker becomes too dark sounding compared to the single coils.
The bottom line is that a single-piece maple neck will generally be more vibrant than a laminated neck.
As Bob rightly says there are many other factors to consider. It is not just black or white.
