Bass fishing customer has 6 rods that need micro guides replaced. I can use another of his rods for the replacement guides.
What is the going rate to do this work. I live in central florida.

Thanks, Mike

Well, I personally wouldn`t ever recommend to the customer to re-use them, unless they are already high quality, or very expensive (like Ti Guides). Micro guides are cheap, so just replace them.

However, I would charge, maybe $5 or $10 (for single foot guides on a light rod) to remove all the old guides for re-use, per rod. Then $5 - $7 per guide for labor. Removing guides is quick and painless on a light rod.

HOWEVER, unless they are already a good, name brand, quality micro guide, I would not suggest to your customer to re-use the guides. Micro guides are not expensive, and a rod can be outfitted with new micro guides for about $10 to $30, depending on how "quality" he would want to go. So, essentially, at $10 to remove and re-use the old ones, he could have new ones.

I am also a beginner though, so I may be way off base here.

P.S. Keep the old blank you scavenge them from if he doesn't ask for it back! You can rebuild it for charity, use it as a cork reamer, or even turn it into another cheap pole for yourself with better stuff laying around the shop!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/21/2017 02:05PM by Earl Estrada.

Earl has a great point. Evidently part of the guides on each rod failed, so what is to prevent the "surviving" ones from failing? I have a lot of rods with micros, never had a failure. Could be this guy is pretty tough on guides. If the failure is ring pop-out, it might be wise to consider guides with no rings or at least ones with special locking features. If it's foot failures, go with the Fuji KB or another "big foot" micro.

Rates vary depending on many factors, such as the geographic area, general economy, etc. Most builders I know will charge roughly $7 to $8 to remove and replace a guide, plus the price of the new guide.

..............

Thanks guys.. I was thinking $10 per guide would be right to remove and replace.

That's certainly not out of line in the least. You might give a small discount if the guy needs, say, more than a dozen guides replaced.

............

10$ plus the cost of the guide. If I do them all..... I drop to 7$ ea for labor

Mike,
If you have a customer with that many broken guides, you might have a long talk with the client to see how and why the guides are broken.

Perhaps you need to suggest using different guides, or the replaced guides of the same size and type will end up getting broken as well.

Good luck

All great answers. I wonder if it is an "off the shelf" cheap rod, with crappy guides to begin with. In my area, we are saturated with crappy rods, and EVERY one of the rods my friends have, (mostly ugly stiks), I always see the guide ring pop out of the guide, because the guide has failed, not the ring.

That being said, some people get attached to their rods, or its a "beater rod". I just did my brothers "beater rod" that we use for fishing in the Halifax River, just for live bait, light weight, off a concrete bridge. We wouldn't want to use our nice rods unless we are targeting certain fish, so we just tool around with those. We are less gentle with them I am sure, and all but 1 guide was broken, and not from being rough (well, maybe a little), but cheap rod companies use cheap guides. Every one was corroded, and most of them, the metal that holds the guide ring in place "split". But for me, its worth replacing guides with better ones, than buying a new pole, because I can do the work, and the parts are cheap.

So, we put on some CRB MD series, they look great, they will last MANY more years than the originals, only cost me about $13, and about 2 hours time to replace all 6 and a tip-top. Sooooooo, I would not have paid someone $85 to fix this pole, but I would certainly do it myself. Then again, for some people, the cost may be worth getting some quality guides on their rod, so they can have a "beater" rod with stronger, better quality guides, that didn't cost them a small fortune.

Just my 2 more, lol.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/24/2017 01:49PM by Earl Estrada.