Adjusting the neck angle

The neck angle on a stock Stagg is pretty small. The fingerboard runs almost parallel with the body of the bass. I have pretty wide thumbs and every once in a while I practically got “stuck” between the fingerboard and the body… Besides that, such a non-existing angle makes bowing harder and gives a whole different feel than that of my normal double bass. So I decided to have a go at making the neck angle larger. Of course this would necessitate a new and taller bridge but that was of later concern. The stock bridge is not that good anyway so…

In order to enlarge the angle of the neck I made a MDF wedge that fitted in the neck cavity. In fact I made two, the one in the picture on the left is the one that “just did not make it” as it made the neck angle way to large… So the one that I used in my bass right now is a bit smaller.

I filled the screw holes in the neck with some hardwood dowels glued in place using Titebond. That way I could drill new holes and make sure the screws would be nice and perpendicular to the bass body instead of crooked as might have been the case when I had reused the old holes.

After drilling some new holes and fastening the neck I ended up with a nice angle that has a good, and much more familiar feel to it. A 110% improvement.

The picture above compares my neck (bottom) to the stock neck on a red Stagg (top). The difference is quite a lot! And by using a separate wedge the modification can easily be undone.