Ideal Handlebar drop?
Ideally I like to have a roughly 5 or 6 cm handlebar to saddle drop on my bikes, even if they are just designed for cruising. Otherwise I tend to use wildly long stems and something closer to being level with my saddle which ends up needing quite a high stack.
Even for my hybrid upright type cruiser bike, I have the stem mounted pretty low compared to the saddle and I am comfortable this way.
so how do you determine a comfortable drop, from a general perspective?
For example, my Felt Doctrine came stock with a 90mm stem, 7° rise, 69.5° head tube with no sag. With the stem mounted @ -7°, the "effective" length felt good, but the bars were too low for longer distance riding. Flipping to +7° put the bars in a more comfortable height while still being relatively aggressive.. now the stem felt a bit too short.
So I tried a 110mm stem with a +10° angle i took off my ill fitting Trek FX and I think I got things pretty bang on as far as bar positioning goes.
to be more specific with stem angles/lengths and what not. What would be some good ways to find an ideal balance between your "effective" stem length and stem rise? (Plus stack height, head tube angle, etc..)