Hi Crusy don't apologise for too many questions !
You haven't had much joy with necks from other suppliers of late.
Think the easiest fix is to get some sharp pointy tools and try and remove the dark filler and fill it with a maple timbermate.
Would be much easier than trying to remove the inlays, although if you can't remove enough dark filler you may have to resort to that.
You can get sticker inlays but that defeats the purpose of having real inlays