Official Luthiers Forum!

How Little of a neck angle is negligible? I'm planning my first build and going through everything very very very scientifically just so I have no nasty design flaws that affect playability. The neck angle I ended up calculating for this guitar was .3 degrees. Is this amount negligible or should I attempt to do it? Trying to get this perfect.

In other news, here is the body design. Screen shot of the PDF from my iPhone so forgive the time bar at top. The neck heel isn't designed in yet as I will obviously have to tweak the body to get the neck dimensions I want, but gotta start somewhere.

I wouldn't bother with such a small angle. Instead, you could just raise the fretboard enough to make up for the distance. You might be able to get a way with no angle and no raised fretboard, but that depends on how much action adjustment your bridge has.
I love the design !

Well, that calculation is with my bridge at it's lowest setting (.30" above top of body) but it's adjusts up to .46" above top of body. Given that information, what is the consensus?

However, now that I think about it, something else seems like it may be out of whack. .30" at the lowest point should be low enough to yield a 0 degree neck angle correct?

After a few more calculations my fretboard height was too low. Just to check, does anybody know of any guitars that have a fretboard height of 7mm so I can see if thats actually how I want it feel wise?

You don't need a neck angle.

The way I learned is to calculate your lowest bridge height into your neck route depth.

So however thick your neck is, from the underside to the top of the frets
-0.30
= your neck cavity depth.

Happy hunting.

_________________
http://www.tinyhouseandland.com

Thanks for the answer guys. I appreciate it. I have it figured out.

0.3" bridge height? Make sure your pickup covers and hardware are not tool tall.

_________________
wah
Wah-wah-wah-wah
Wah

I never worry myself much with exact neck angles. For wraparound and tune o matic bridges I know that I need between 20/32" and 22/32" clearance at the bridge, so I will add a healthy amount of fretboard clearance above the body top (still no neck angle at this point) then I will take the neck back and forth from the belt sander, slowly removing more material to get a proper angle that will squarely give me the bridge height that I need. What degree of neck pitch do i end up with? Beats me. Maybe 1 or 2 degrees?