Adam read my post 7 down from this one: RX-7, guide sizes discussed there. My son has a Wild Black Carrot Stix Cwz 701XhF casting. 7 ft. 1/2 -21/2 oz. lure, 12-30lb. line. Stripper is double foot & 8 single foot runners. And guess what... all micros. Welcome to the land of confusion! Lynn

Adam, I know in your first post you said you were building this rod to match a rod you had already built for this customer, but man a size 8 ring on the tip top is awfully big for what I assume is a freshwater rod.

If you're building the rod to look symmetrical, then I would think that you're pretty much limited in your guide size choices. Meaning size 8 runners. If symmetry is less of a concern, then your choice of guide sizes within the American Tackle Holographic line increases.

If performance is the most important aspect, then you widen your choice in guide sizes further still. You'd really increase your guide size choice if you weren't married to the American Tackle Holo guides.

As for number of guides. The rod blank, the size of the guides you end up using, and how closely you want the line to follow the natural bend of the blank during static load testing, is going to determine that.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/12/2016 09:11PM by David Baylor.

Personally I would switch guides before I put anything that large on a bass rod.

Thanks for the tips guys I was concerned about the size myself.

Steve said what I was thinking when I made my post. Using size 8 guides as runners would definitely make for a heavy guide train, and hurt the responsiveness of the rod.

Hopefully you can talk to the customer and convince him that building a rod that matches the other rod in appearance, is going to mean that the rod would not perform to its fullest potential.

From the looks of it, at least from going by Mud Hole's catalog, you're going to have to go to a manufacturer other than American Tackle if you want a smaller ring sized tip top with a 7 mm tube. Fuji makes a CMNAT or BMNAT (depending on what color frame you want) tip top that you can get in a 7mm tube and a size 5 ring. Ring material is Alconite.

From there you could go with either 5's for runners, or if you don't mind a bit of a non symmetrical look, 4.5 runners to make an even lighter guide train. I used 4.5 runners on my most recent build I did last year, and I really love the way the rod performs.

Just a thought .....