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Bass guitar body-neck angle relation

#2
Hi.

There can be, and usually on set-neck and neck-through instruments there is.

On bolt-ons it's rarer on purpose, but as the neck can be shimmed to any imaginable angle, after a setup there usually is some difference between the planes of thee neck and the body.

Quite a few bridge designs require a more drastic angle, Gibson three point "oil rig" for example. Using a Fender type bridge on those kind of basses would require a hefty shim between the bridge and the body.

Regards
Sam
 
#4
I can't see the pic.

In response to your first question, there is only a neck angle if you choose to include it in your design. Personally, I'm not a fan of neck angled singlecut guitars, unless the top is carved to enable the angle to be hidden in the carving - a la Les Paul for example.

There is nothing wrong with having no angle and simply making your fretboard high enough above the surface of the bass to accommodate the height of the bridge you want. This has even been done with Gibson's Tuneomatic bridge. The early seventies SG guitars had a fretboard that sat about 7/16" proud of the surface of the bass. In that case though it looked stupid, which is probably why they resumed placing a neck angle.

Alternatively, if you don't want a neck angle but want a fretboard low to the body, then you can recess the bridge into the body instead.

Hope this helps...
 
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#6
Hi.

You can do that, but a "normal" height Fender style bridge has to be recessed into the body like beej above explained.

Other option would be to raise the FB with a laminate between the FB and the neck, like on my Ric copy Heerby for example. Or to make the FB itself thicker of course.

Regards
Sam
 
#7
The Epiphone T-Bird neck is angled and the bridges are designed to accomodate the angled neck. I ran across this problem when I was fitting my Fender Jazz neck onto the Epi T-Bird body, on which I am using a Hipshot Supertone bridge. The strings were riding really high on the neck, even with the saddles at the lowest setting. It was then that I realized that I had the neck mounted parallel with the body, while the bridge was designed for an angled neck. A simple shim took care of this.
 
#8
I can't recommend enough that you get Melvyn Hiscocks "Make Your Own Electric Guitar" and if nothing else read the chapter "Designing Your Own Guitar".

As mentioned above, for the most the neck/body angle is a result of how high the strings are where the cross the bridge, and how high they are where the neck joins the body.

Hiscock's book has a 'design exercise' where he takes you through a step by step process you can use to determine the angle needed and/or how much profile your fingerboard should have over the body.
 
#9
Here's what you may want to do:

NTsideview.jpg
 
#13
bassteban said:
This confuzzles me- it appears that the finger/fretboard(or gluing surface for the FB)is half-angled & not flat all the way up/down it's length; just a trick of the rendering? I mean I see the purpose of the angle on the bottom(heel), but why bother planing the top surface(assuming it's already flat)?
Click to expand...

It a trick ;)

No the body side is where the angle is introduced, this is in the event that just the fretboard is glued and there is nothing else elevating the FB any higher, so that it won't be countersunk into the body. OTOH, If the body portion is "notched" slightly lower than the FB surface (FB+ a little higher) there will be no need to angle the body side.
 

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