The difference is not as subtle as you would expect (all other things being the same). A quick condensed history of the strat has it with a swamp ash body & maple neck up to sometime in 1957, when they moved to an alder body. In 1959 they added the rosewood board as a slab (in the normal way of everyone else). In 1963 they changed the rosewood to a veneer, curving the underlying maple too. Through the 60's there were various changes (including poplar bodies and a few mahogany ones). The neck got the bigger headstock, maple neck with separate fingerboard and then the 3 bolt necks with the micro-tilt. At this point the infamous 'heavy' strats appear. They had hard ash bodies and maple or rosewood bullet truss rod necks. Maple necks have more attack and the guitars always seem a bit brighter than roesewood, but some of that is down to the body change to alder. Hard ash guitars have a bright sound too, so the hard ash/maple combos of the 70's had some bright, thin sounds. However if the guitars were set up correctly, the 70's pickups had a nice sound. The 3 bolt neck needs to be set up correctly to get the best out of the guitar, and this is where the 70's strats get their bad raps. Fender didn't set the guitars up so well in the 70's (as a Fender and Gibson dealer at the time I used to spend a lot of time on setups). I'm not a fan of hard ash because I think it is too heavy, but people do get a great sound feom them (Walter Trout uses a 70's strat and it looks like ash where the grain has worn away). The fingerbord woods affect the attack, and the body wood seems to affect the body (curiously enough 8)).
