The violin is so in-bred, in a sense, that you almost have to use soft maple. I'm sure the early violin makers settled on maple as 'suitable', and probably a better wood than either poplar or willow (both of which were used, even by Strad). Maple seems to grow with fancy grain more commonly, and that does actually seem to confer a bit of toughness to the wood. Anyway, makers continued to refine their designs, and since they were using soft maple they took it's properties into account.
Meanwhile, composers kept coming up with more and more difficult music to play on the violin, and each time they advanced the technique they put stronger constraints on the size and shape. Any significant departure from 'standard' at this point can easily render the instrument unusable for some part of the standard repertoire. To define a 'significant' departure, keep in mind that some players find a 'long pattern' Stradivari hard to play: the body is 1/8" longer than the 'G' pattern.
Rock maple is significantly harder and denser than the European soft maple, which is closer in properties to our local Red maple, or Broad leaf maple from the northwest. I've used Rock maple in violins: it costs some in terms of power, and, of course, it's harder to carve...
So far the best non-maple wood I've found for fiddles is Black walnut, and it has measurable properties that are quite similar to European maple. Another wood that seems to work well is apple, although I have not tried it yet.
Guitars are not nearly as constrained as violins, and there are lots of woods that can be used for the B&S of a guitar. What's interesting to me is that people tend to feel that darker colored woods tend to sound 'darker'. Thus soft maple is said to make a 'bright' sounding guitar, while walnut is felt to be 'darker', even though they have virtually identical properties. Go figure. Anyway, it's really not hard to make a good sounding maple guitar if you take it's properties into account. What's harder is selling it, since people listen with their eyes so much.
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