Satin neck finishes turn to gloss where you play them.... Exotics are fine with me, but there is a lot to be said for maple. There's a REASON (or five) every single other wood is compared to maple first, and that is, the stuff works. Cheap, stable, sounds great... and if you go with Warmoth's "pro" double truss rod, I nearly venture to say, "NOTHING matters..." The sucker won't bend, and the tone of the neck is largely from the rod. Which some people don't like, which is why there are other choices. Suffice it to say that "woody/steely" is right up there with male/female, light/dark, good/evil, dog/cat & boxers/briefs among the world's great, dichotomous continuums. You just... guess...
Thinning True-Oil or Formby's way, way down with alcohol or spirits, or thinning poly way, way down with water (1/2 n 1/2) is a good way to get very thin layers that soak into the wood before hardening. Finishing has gotten both way better and way easier in the last few decades, to the point that the "lore" associated with it is usually just WRONG. The speciousness of the nonsense about the mystical, manly "shooting nitro" meme is PROVEN by the fact that you can't even get "real" nitro these days, one too many three-headed babies caused the jackbooted thugs of the government black-ops fascists to force the manufacturers to come up with wood finishing products that work better, look better, cost less, last longer, less filling.... darn. Actually modern chemistry helped too. (We have a great nitro-shooter here, but he's not full of nonsense, he just does real pretty work - I'm not, actually, much of a Krylonhead either.)
There's a lot of opinionizing about whether satin-y or smooth-y finishes "play better", but it's mostly based on sitting in front of the TV running your hand up and down and up and down your neck. If you tapped Jeff Beck or John McLaughlin on the shoulder right in the middle of some ridiculous torching solo and said "excuse me, sir - is your neck smooth enough right now?" hopefully he would just beat your brains out, problem solved. Yes - it was smooth enough.... :guitaristgif:
