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Permalink Reply by Will King on November 5, 2015 at 5:03am

If you want to put a rod peizo pickup under your saddle in the bridge, you need height.  I did a baritone banjo ukulele recently and I had 1 degree on the pot and I cut the neck to 1 degree.  That put the bride height at about 7/8 inch, just a little more that what I wanted.  1 degree is a lot.  I have built about 8 instruments with down angle on the neck and most were 1.5 degrees and the 2 degree baritone was the most degrees I have used.  3 degrees would be a great big bridge.  You can find decriptions on CBN on how to make down angle with a neck through and I have tried these with some success

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Permalink Reply by Primitive Acoustics on November 5, 2015 at 6:23am

You need the bridge height (saddle) high enough to get good string tension to drive the top of an acoustic.
The following link tells you how and why in good detail.

http://www.buildyourguitar.com/resources/tips/aangle.htm

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Permalink Reply by Jim Saraceno on November 5, 2015 at 6:41am

Thanks PA! That link pretty well answers my question.

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Permalink Reply by darryl kernaghan on November 5, 2015 at 6:52am

It's not so much about the height,though certainly it makes variation easier,but you will find it makes playability and comfort better,since i started raking  the neck,i've found no reason at all not to

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Permalink Reply by turtlehead on November 5, 2015 at 11:21am

Angling the neck was the best thing that ever happened to my builds.  It's amazing what a couple degrees does for playabilty like darryl says.  Low consistent action and intonation all the way up the neck.  I've found about 2 degrees works for me - good break angle and reasonable bridge height.  It probably is slightly less when strung up under tension. 

When I started doing this, I also adopted the zero fret which eliminated all the fussing around with a nut (my least favorite part of the process) making the final setup a breeze.

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Permalink Reply by Jim Saraceno on November 6, 2015 at 1:42am

Thanks guys! As always, a lot of great insight and information.

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