Yep, a laminated fingerboard is when the fingerboard is glued-on to the neck - as with rosewood.
There are two types Fender has used - flat: when the glue joint is on a flat surface, and round: when the laminate is thinner and curves around the neck at the appropriate radius.

I believe you can choose either a Nitrocellulose OR Polyurethane finish, but not both. However, you could have the neck in poly and the body in nitro if you wanted.

Hi Xhefri: that's an excellent post. Thanks! Cheers - C

Ditto: When he's start posting them photos, there's fight'in words attached!
For my part, give me a solid maple neck.

LOL! Just put in my 2 cents! Ok, I know these kinds of topics go round and round after watching the Forum for years. For sure, when dealing with electromagnetics, the type if pickup you use will effect the sound. But honestly, I have built a lot of guitars and test drive them in my guitar building/recording/editing room. For instance, I built this Tele (3 of them now) which is a 67 Reissue (Some call them Keith Richards models):



When I play it in the neck position it sounds just like some of my Les Pauls. I really can't tell the difference. The type of pickups can create different frequencies and ohm reading which do affect the tone, but the wood very little. I really think that since guitars are very iconic creatures, a lot of sale hype goes into matching pickups with neck and body wood. But the truth is, you can slap a pickup on a piece of plywood (and some guitars are just that) and play it and it sounds good. I have hot rodded several really cheap guitars, junk ones in fact, with high-end pickups and made the guitar sound like most high-end guitars. So the guitar and pickup companies use this mysticism as a sale tactic as it sells guitars. One of my friends just had a custom Strat hand made. Cost him right at $4000. I asked him, Can you really hear the difference on that guitar. He said, "Oh ya, for sure!" I played it, thought it did not play as well as some of my Strat Plus' nor did I really care for the tone because the hand wound "custom" pickups were too thin sounding (because of the magnets and they way they were wound.) But after paying that much money, He heard things I did not hear! LOL!

One time I recorded a Blue solo that had organ, bass and drum accompanying it, which was very expressive. I used a very cheap older MIM Tele that was a top loader with stock cheapy pickups, and the guys that listened to it thought, wow, is that must be one of your high-end guitars, like a Strat or? I took out the Tele and said "this!" They were shocked. It is all a little like Jack White and some of the crazy things he does like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCFXeChXfcI Then watching guitar manufacturers and what they say about the guitars they sell, it gets really confusing. One will say, This is a solid & heavy piece of Ash which will cause your guitar to have a lot more resonance and sustain. Then another will say, this is a very light piece of Alder and will cause your guitar to have a lot more resonance and sustain. Which is it? I do know that chambered bodies cause more resonance, but that seems to be more of an acoustic thing like playing a real hollow body electric will feedback and vibrate more than a solid body guitar—thus why the Gibson 335 had a piece of mahogany running down through the center of the body. So more solid is less feedback and less sustain? I have a few really heavy solid guitars that sustain like crazy.

Anyhow people argue this kind of thing for hours. There was a multi-page thread on this forum about all this a while back. Where is that thread anyhow??? Anyone remember? I submit this in good faith that it is just my opinion and not as a dogmatic argument. I respect other people's opinions that differ with mine!

You contacted a showcase dealer already didn't you?

Thanks for sharing your opinion/knowledge. It certainly helps.

So far I more often just go, Wow, this one feels so nice!

I suggest you look at the current trend of soundproofing by forcing soundwaves to pass through different density materials.

Let alone expect those soudwaves to bounce back and affect the string without distorting the note (change it's vibration pattern to the point of rendering it nothing like correct pitch). Because all the pickup does see is string movement.