I've tried to go back and read as many of the older posts on guide placement as I can, along with reading "Rod Building Guide". I also went to anglers resource and read thru there articles on guide placement, rod stress, etc: along with using the software. I still have some questions.
1. More guides/fewer guides? I've seen posts and articles discussing how more guides affect the rod's handling negatively, yet if I'm understanding the articles on rod stress, Fuji says just the opposite? Is this just a difference of opinions?

2. Guide height, same basic question, some articles higher guides help, some say just the opposite, facts or opinions.

3. Fuji talks about their placement software is just a guide, that performance is the real indicator, so do I go back to Tom Wickman's book and tape guides on and see how the rod responds to casting with it?

4. I'm getting the impression, probably incorrectly that Fuji is basically saying, " Our software is just a guide, tape your guides on, go outside and do some casts, and make adjustments from there, is that a correct reading?

Thanks for any advice, just a bit confused.
John

Everything having to do with guides and placement is a compromise. More guides provide better stress distribution, but add more weight which reduces rod speed (reaction/recovery).

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The Ohio Rod Builders will be holding a gathering of rod builders on March 14th. This is one of the topics which ( can be very confusing) that we will be discussing. If in the vicinity of Ohio you may consider signing up to come. There is more information a few post below.

Bill

Ohio Rod Builders

Canton, Ohio

Tom, this is where I'm getting confused, according to this statement on Fuji's website, "Fuji’s New Guide Concept combined with Static Load Positioning usually results in 1 to 3 additional guides that are lighter and smaller than traditional guide layouts. This configuration does a better job of maintaining rod sensitivity while more smoothly tracking the rod’s natural bend and maximizing the transfer of power from the rod to the line.".

Am I better off going with more, but smaller guides closer to the tip, or is this just advertising malarkey, or am I just misunderstanding what they are saying, (quite possible).

Please, I'm not trying to argue guide placement, I have absolutely no rod buidling experience, just trying to read and understand as much as I can on guide utiliizaiton.

Thanks
John



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/20/2015 12:27PM by John Tallyn.

John,
A rod is basically a tool that is used to supply energy to a lure, to hold a string for fishing, and a tool to be able to get the lure where you want it and after hooking a fish, to get the fish back to you.

I just use the very simple analogy - place a guide any where on the rod that is needed to allow the line to follow the contour of the loaded blank.

The important thing to remember is to use - enough, but just enough guides for this to happen.

I normally use a roll of 1/4 inch tape to help me with the initial guide placement. While, holding the rod, I will apply pressure to the rod blank, by pressing the tip and first few inches of the blank to the carpeted floor. I make note of where the guide begins to initially bend.

I put a piece of tape at that point. Than, I will continue to apply more pressure to the blank further down the rod by applying a bit more pressure. As the blank curves more, I will mark the 2nd guide. Then, I will repeat for the 3rd guide.

By that time, I will have a good idea of the blank speed and general curvature of the loaded rod.

From that point, I will just use the tape measure to possibly place one more guide in front of the first one that I placed, and continue to place guides on down the rod, at increasing guide spacing distance to reflect the increasing power of the blank and the lesser amount of bending that the rod will experience under fishing conditions.

I think that the old adage of one guide per foot is normally not too far off. However, with some of the fast and extra fast tips that are on some blanks, I will often have the first 3 or 4 guides, placed at 3 inch spacing from the tip back. But, by the time one gets to the stripper guide, it is just as likely that the guides will be more than 12 or 14 inches apart.

Summary - just insure that you have enough - but just enough guides on the blank to insure that the fishing line will follow the contour of the loaded blank.

Tape up the guides, slip a guide on the tip, mount a reel, let about 20 feet off the reel and thread the line through the guides and tip. I normally then, just take a couple of line wraps around my foot and with slack out of the line, raise the rod tip, and observe the line flow as increasing amounts of pressure are placed on the guide train, while observing the line flow against a light background in a well lighted room. If you find that the line is deviating from the blank a great deal in a specific location, then a guide / s need to be moved or additional guide/s need to be added to insure that the line is correctly following the contour of the loaded blank.

Actually a pretty simple procedure and will take care of your guide placement. Then, of course you can talk about guide height and guide sizes but that is the subject of another discussion.

Good luck

John,

1. The New Guide Concept, KR Concept, and the use of micro guides in casting rods are based on the idea that more small light weight guides will allow you to build a better rod than one with a few large heavy guides in a Cone of Flight arrangement. Think of this way, if we could live in an ideal world, think high school or intro college physics, where many things are massless and frictionless, the best rods would be rods with an infinite number of massless guides, or an interline rod where the line travels through a frictionless blank. Unfortunately, we live in the real world. We must make compromises. By using the smallest lightest guides you can, particularly in the tip section, you are going to keep the inertia (resistance to change that makes a rod slower to load and take longer to damp oscillations) of a rod to a minimum. Because the rod is thinner, lighter, and more flexible in the tip area, any addition of mass here will have a much greater impact on the performance of the rod than mass added near the butt of the rod.

There are compromises. The NGC 27x method produces very strong performing rods with little tweaking needed. This system when tweaked can be dialed in very well to a particular reel/line combination. Deviating from that combination will lead to slight decreases in casting performance. The KR Concept takes it a step further reducing the weight and number of guides in the reduction train. With this reduction in ring size comes compromise, as the KR Concept is at its best with limp lines like superlines and light mono. Heavy mono and fluorocarbon lines may encounter a bit more resistance in this type of guide train. Then there is a the MicroWave Guide System, which is very well done, and performs very well with a range of reel sizes and line types without need for adjustment. Set it up, and it will work.

2. In reference to guide height, guide height is very important to spinning rods. You have essentially 3 types of options traditional V frame guides, similar to the large ring guides that sat in a V shape frame in the early 90s and before, the Y frame, like those that are part of the Fuji Concept Guides or Alps XY guides, where the ring sizes are about 1 size smaller than the V frame guides for a guide of similar height, and the taller match or KR Concept guides that drops the ring size down to 2 sizes smaller than a typical V frame guide of similar height. The result of the taller guides with smaller inserts is that you can get the guide height you need with significantly less mass.

Overall rod performance is tied very closely to the mass of a rod, and even more closely to the distribution of that mass.

3. It is true, every guide train layout technique is just a guide and can be tweaked for best performance. Just as automobile manufacturers do not use the same suspension parts in every car, a custom rod builder can engineer the system by tweaking it a bit to perform best in a certain application. The theory of damped oscillations for the suspension (guide train layout technique) may be the same for each car, but the best execution may involve slightly different parts (tweaks to the layout).

4. That is exactly what they are saying. A guide train, aside from possibly the MicroWave is not a one size fits all proposition. Even the MicroWave is a one size fits most endeavor, though they have expanded the offerings to begin satisfying some of those outlier situations.

I'm not intensely loyal to any guide manufacturer or system, as I've used AmTaks, Alps, Forecast, Fuji, and Kigan. Each manufacturers designs have their strengths and weaknesses, and I like to choose the best option for the task at hand.

Joe

Joe appreciate the explanation, makes a little more sense now. No magic one size fits all formula, once again experience trumps computers and math formulas. Really appreciate the help from all of you.
John

You can play with reel seat and spool angles, a collection of alphabet soup guides, trial and error placement, or just go with Microwaves and have a rod that is optimized for most reels.

Everything is a compromise. In nutshell, you want to use the smallest and lightest guides that will perform the required task and stand up to that task over the long haul. Use enough guides, but not too many. If you must use more, try lighter. There will always be some trial and error, some thoughtful consideration, and some amount of giving one thing in order to get another, that takes place. But don't beat yourself up over it - guides are getting better and lighter every day. It's getting easier to reach a nice compromise every season now.

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