Angle Headset + Travel Increase

An angleset is still likely to slacken your seattube and reduce your reach a touch, due to having a higher stack than the headset you take out, things won't stay identical. It's a good option though. What travel are your forks currently?

I've had -2deg anglesets on a couple of bikes I've ridden for years, both with 10mm extra fork travel and rode much better.

Superstar and Works Components are both great in my experience (several years on both makes).

Get an offset bushing or two in there as well.

An angleset is still likely to slacken your seattube

Only if you go +, pretty sure the OP is looking at a -.

I put a -2 in my bike, no complaints whatsoever but even with a slightly longer folk did end up changing from 175 to 165 cranks.

Oh, and is the frame warrantied for longer travel - you may or may not care, but it's always handy to stick to 'limits'.

How slack is the seat angle that you're worried about it being an issue?

An angleset is still likely to slacken your seattube and reduce your reach a touch, due to having a higher stack than the headset you take out

It's only the top cup that will be taller, seat angle would steepen slightly for the same fork, the increased fork length for the OP will counter that a bit though.

Normally effective reach may get longer, stay the same or get shorter depending how much the front end drops due the increased HA and how much additional "head tube length" you end up with due to the taller top cup (often none as you just remove spacers, the steerer stays the same length), again ops increased fork length will counter a bit.

It’s only the top cup that will be taller,

Not according to the pictures on the canyon site, unless I'm looking at the wrong year.

A -2 headset will steal about 7mm of reach from the lay back on the fork in the headtube. The loss from the taller front is less - c.3mm from recollection. You can offset those with a slightly longer stem or forward roll in your bars, subject to comfort. Seat angle looks pretty slack anyway and it will cant back a little from the extra head tube stack. Increasing fork travel will worsen this unavoidably.

If the fork is decent, I'd be tempted to leave your travel alone, IMO it wont have as much of an effect as the head angle will. Despite that, if you go longer, you migh be able to adjust your increase in bar height with spacers if you have adequate space, but it wont assist with the seat post angle.

Not according to the pictures on the canyon site, unless I’m looking at the wrong year.

The new lower Cup will [still] be zero stack, or is the neuron a 44mm headtube?

Not sure! I suppose its not going to be 44mm - thats a bit old had these days.

So that means its the extra fork travel alone that would need to be accounted for.

Plug your current geometry into this calculator. It'll let you see how your ideas compare to what you have now.

I did this a while back with a Jeffsy and found that a -1.5 headset and +10mm fork travel basically kept the geometry the same as before except with a slacker head angle and about 3mm less reach. I'm on a different bike now but if I were doing it again I'd probably go for the full 2 degree headset.

A -2 headset will steal about 7mm of reach from the lay back on the fork in the headtube

Check on this with the calculator though, the head tube also drops a bit with the slacker angle which causes a lengthening of reach which can compensate for it.

Another good idea if you're concerned about decreasing reach is to remove spacers from under the stem and use a bar with a higher rise to compensate. Spacers push your handlebar up and back whereas a taller bar can be rolled so it only adds height.

Another good idea if you’re concerned about decreasing reach is to remove spacers from under the stem and use a bar with a higher rise to compensate.

I did that with a 50mm rise bar, 10mm travel increase (20 over release spec), -1 headset (should have gone 1.5) and slightly longer than standard offset fork. My bike has similar geometry to yours and has gained about 20mm in wheelbase, sits at about 65.5 HA. It already had a very low BB, so an offset bushing was out of the question.

It's not slack by the latest standards (I've ridden DH bikes @ 63 HA and aggro HT @ 64 HA) but I've found it's enough. I have no problems riding the steepest tracks at Ladybower, Macc Forest and Upper Goyt. On proper steep stuff a higher bar and squat down, elbows out, head over the stem riding position is a must, not to mention decent toothy tyres. XC rubber (especially when wet) won't cut it!

I found the limits of shorter travel compared to a DH bike becomes the next bone of contention once you start pushing into proper DH territory on a lesser bike!

I’ve never ridden a bike that hasn’t been made better by adding a -1.5/-2 angleset be it an XC or a DH bike. Go for it.

A longer fork on items own will raise the BB and slacken seat angle but adding the angle set will offset this (depending on how much travel you increase the fork by).
My hardtail started off with a 65.5* head angle and I added a -2 angleset ans lengthened the travel to 140 and it’s still good uphill and awesome downhill at speed.

You can also buy some offset shock bushes from somewhere like OffsetShockBushings.com As another cheap option to play around with geometry changes.

I had an old Orange Alpine that had a -2 angleset, offset bushings and a 170mm Marz 55 fork which took it down to approx 62.5a63 degree head angle it pedalled uphill great and ripped down like a DH bike even though the seat angle was probably a bit slack by modern standards.

Worth a play around

I have a 2020 Neuron CF9 and I've got a single offset bushing and a 140mm airshaft on order which should hopefully give me a 66.5 headangle without much change in bb height.

I don't think it's possible to add 2 bushings to the shock and I've read that the angleset isn't recommended on carbon frames.

It's worth a play around I think. Such changes can always be reversed.