Well its yet another lash-up that is unlikely to escape anytime soon. This time it is a carbon fiber strip being glued into a routed channel in the neck. The carbon fiber acts as a stabilizer in the maple wood. While regular maple is quite stable, figured maple, sometimes called "curly", is not so stable. Since we don't want no stinking plain old boring wood in our guitars, we like to use the curly or the quilted or the spalted or anything but boring wood, therefore the carbon fiber. Its expensive as hell, not fun to work with, very light and very, very strong... A good thing for a guitar neck.