Neck tilt setup

[Worshiper]

So I'm a bit curious how you guys set up the necks in your basses? What I mean is, how it sits in the pocket. I used to just rout a pocket in the neck and make the neck and fretboard sit completely parallel to the neck pocket (assuming there is no bend in the neck due to truss rod). However, lately, I've noticed that its much more efficient and playable to have the neck sit with a slight taper in the pocket. That is, with the headstock dipping a bit towards the back of the instrument (assuming thre is no bend in the neck due to truss rod) much like a les paul is set up. I'm just curious to see if any of you guys do the same.

[SDB Guitars]

Some people route the neck pocket at an angle (you see this more with set necks, but it works as well for bolt-on applications), others route the pocket as you said, and then shim the neck to the optimal angle. This allows for neck angle adjustment according to the player's preference, string gauge, etc. I like very low action, and play very lightly, letting the preamp and amp do all the "volume" work, so I rarely "dig in" much. If you played my bass, and played it hard at all, the strings would buzz horribly.

When I loan my bass out, I usually take out the shim that I made for it, and I have a couple of different tapered shims I can install if they want medium or medium-high action, as opposed to the low action I prefer.

Fender

[bassteban]

I've been working on a couple of short-scale EUB/long-scale bass guitars(37.5")w/lots of features from both BG & DB. For instance, the necks are bolted on, but the neck angle is near to what you'd see on a typical DB(can't recall the actual angle, but this part is done). For this angle, I just drew it full size w/the neck pocket flat/parallel to the top & the fingerboard angled back- so the gluing surface(for the fingerboard)is at a pretty extreme angle to the neck/pocket. To make this part, IIRC I made a jig and ran a router over it.