Rock Maple – Sawn – Guitar Neck – 2 sizes

Rock maple neck blank. 38×90×900mm. Acer saccharum — the Fender standard. Hard, stable, bright-sounding. Works in every build ever called a maple neck. Sold per piece.

The timber Fender built their reputation on. Rock maple — Acer saccharum — is the hard, bright-toned North American maple that has carried bolt-on electric necks since the 1950s. If you’ve held a Telecaster or Stratocaster maple neck, you’ve held this species.

What it is. True hard maple from the sugar-maple group, the dense, close-grained timber the American trade sells as Hard Maple and the Australian trade calls Rock Maple — same species, two names. Straight to slightly wavy grain in this stock, uniform under the eye, the honest working register that builders take when they want a neck that behaves predictably under the carve.

What you’d make with it at 38×90×900mm.

• Bolt-on electric neck — Strat, Tele, P-bass, J-bass profile
• Set-neck construction with a scarf or stacked heel
• Multi-laminate neck blanks when paired with a contrasting stripe
• Heavy-duty router or shaper jig stock

Working notes

• Density: ~705 kg/m³ — dense, the upper end of common neck timbers
• Hardness: ~6.4 kN Janka — hard enough to feel under a chisel, not so hard it fights you
• Grain: Tight and uniform — closes up under finish, takes a glassy surface
• Surface: Supplied rough-sawn — dress one face true before templating or glue-up
• Working: Machines cleanly with carbide; sharp HSS chisels work fine for hand work. Burns under dull router bits — keep tooling sharp
• Finishing: Takes nitro, oil and shellac well — Rustins Danish oil or Shellawax cream both work; many builders tint with dye before clear-coat

What luthiers say about it. Fender’s published neck spec has called for hard maple of this density and grain pattern since the company’s earliest production runs, and the major luthier forums (TalkBass, Telecaster Discussion Page) consistently report rock maple as the baseline reference timber for bright, attack-forward bolt-on tone.

The stack it came from. Hard maple is hard to land in Australia at neck-blank dimensions — we picked these up years ago and put them aside for the builds that would actually use them. Once they go, the listing closes.

References. Species reference: Acer saccharum — Wikipedia. Browse more: our Rock Maple stock.