Update... After cutting the guides off three times in an attempt to place the guides on top w/o the line touching the blank I gave up and installed a spiral wrap. I left the guides in the same position as that seemed to be what the blank needed. The line wasn't making hard contact and probably would have been just fine, it wasn't what I was looking for. 2 more guides would have solved th problem but that would have brought the guide count up to 14.

On casting distance... I had been just stepping off the casting distances, figuring 3' per step. After posting those distances here I decided to actually measure the distance of each cast. Mmmmm... Seems I'm a bit of a short stepper! I measured a half-dozen cast. Every one came in between 240' and 245' while the single exception on one that hit 247'. I stepped off one cast and it came to 93 steps or what I would of claimed as 276'. Soooo... The long and short of it is 300' with this set up isn't going to happen.

The 240' is, again, with only a 1oz. Egg sinker. I would suspect that under fishing conditions, with a bait, I'm hitting between 180-200' with any given cast depending on the bait used.