Neck angle... or not?

[foreright]

Hi all, just in the final planning stages of a 6-string headless build and I have a question regarding neck angle and as to whether I need one or not. I'm planning for this to be a set neck design and because it's a single (bridge) pickup design I can make the tenon very long to make this work. Thus I have no adjustability in the neck angle once it's glued and hence the question I have built set-neck instruments before but those were pretty clear cut as to whether the neck needed to be angled or not.

In this case, I have a headless bridge that I'm planning to recess by approx. 5mm. The minimum height of the saddles appears to be (and I'll measure this absolutely accurately before final decision...) a hair over 14mm so the string is going to sit a fraction over 9mm above the surface at lowest. My fingerboard is 7mm thick and the fretwire I'm using is 1.2mm high.

So that means that there's an approx. 1.5mm difference between the bridge height and the thickness of the fretboard+frets. As I see it, there's two approaches here:

[1] Raise the entire neck by 1.5mm but keep it level with the body. This is going to be easiest to build I think as I don't have to worry about either angling the back of the neck or angling the pocket or:
[2] Angle the neck back (ie. angle the back of the neck or the pocket) by approx. 0.5 degrees. I think this will look better as I've seen instruments with a (very!) raised neck and it's pretty ugly.

Is there any particular reason to favour either approach or does it just come down to my preference?

 

[ChAoZ]

I fit the nut and bridge before gluing in the neck and put on the 2 outer strings, with the bridge/saddles at their lowest height I finesse the angle of the neck until the strings are a bees ball above the last fret

 

[foreright]

Yep, that's what I'd end up doing as a sanity check just before gluing but I tend to do all my planning in CAD (with the actual parts on hand to measure!). In this case, as I say I can either implement a very small neck angle or route the neck pocket leaving the neck surface 1.5mm above the body as I'm planning to recess the headless bridge pretty significantly as it's quite chunky. Geometrically, both approaches would work out the same (ie. strings would be parallel to surface of frets and touching with bridge at lowest point). My question was more as to whether there's any reason to favour one approach over the other. Regardless I think I'm going to go with the latter approach for simplicity and as you say, triple check everything before gluing

Edit: As an aside, nice build - I like a Kelly shape too albeit mine's slightly different to yours:

 

[JimboLodisC]

The bridge determines that.

 

[foreright]

The bridge determines that.

Except… in this case it doesn’t. The point is that either way works from a geometrical pov. The question is if there’s a reason to favour one approach over the other but never mind. I’ll experiment.

 

[ChAoZ]

I think that a neck angle would be more aesthetically pleasing to my eye than the whole neck sitting higher

 

[ste vla jang]

yes angle the neck heel 0.5-1 mm ,aesthetically pleasing..and you're have more advantages to setup the saddle heights later.sometimes i also tapered the fretboard,lower from the nut such 4-5 mm by the higher fret around 5-6 mm.