Hello everyone,

much was written and said about the superiority of custom rods in comparison to so-called factory rods. While I agree with this general opinion as regards the majority of factory rods, I wonder what do you think about 'top' factory rods from Japan, I mean rods made by manufacturers like Megabass, Evergreen etc?

I had a couple of such rods in my hand, and while I could discuss their spacing and guides selection on one hand, on the other hand I have an impression that the blanks they are made on, for instance, are not available on the market for a rodbuilder (I think these are proprietary blanks of those companies, please correct me if I am wrong). Secondly, the finish of these rods is generally breathtaking - and I wonder wheter it can be copied by a 'regular' rodbuilder, it would require really great effort and skill in my opinion. Not to mention some technical solutions, like 'resonance' grips in Megabass rods for instance.

So, what do you think?


Best regards,
Pavel



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/27/2006 03:42AM by Pawel Tymendorf.

Some custom rods are not appealing to the eye at all,some are works of art,true custom are built with the user involved with the design process to place the handle and seat at the optimun location and then the guides placed accordingly.This is where a factory rod looses out.I started building rods because I couldnt find a handle and seat set up the way I like it.Sure the factory rod may feel and perform great but if those same components were assembled with the user input a custom rod builder uses it would be better than a rod built to please the masses.

Freddwhy (Rapt-Ryte)

Fred,

I think you made a good point stating that "if those same components were assembled with the user input a custom rod builder uses it would be better than a rod built to please the masses".

While I completely agree with that, the problem I have is that I think those components are not available for a custom rod builder. I mean very specific blanks those rods utilize and, for instance, all those georgeous trigger seats and so on - things I have not found at mudhole or anglersworkshop and other popular sources.




Best regards,
Pavel

Pawel,

You mentioned Megabass and Evergreen and I agree that they have set very high standards as rod manufacturers. Very few other rod manufacturers will be able to match up to them in terms of finishing and components used. When they first appeared, and when I held one in my hand, I thought I was living and fishing in a different world. As a custom builder, I can only hope to achieve those standards as financially, I will not be able to afford to have facilities like those of Megabass and Evergreen. Having said all these, I am still building and many of my rich clients still prefer my custom built rods. The fact is that there are some beautiful things that we can do that both Megabas and Evergreen can't. We listen to our customers and are always face to face with them. This provides comfort and reassurance. We build only to the specific requirements of our customers, and I believe this is a huge difference.

Cheers and keep on building.

Anthony Lee

I used to wrap rods for a company called Tifa, a high end Japanese company, they have changed names since I wrapped for them. The blanks were made for them by Loomis, they were not available to the general public. The guides were Fuji gold cermet, and the reel seats were made for them by Fuji, also not available to the general public. They used butt caps with removable weights so you could adjust the balance. The cork they used was the finest cork I have ever seen. They were one piece bass rods that sold for around $800 to $900. They were very picky about the quality and used the made in the U.S.A. label as a selling point in Japan. They weren't custom rods but they were beautiful.

Thomas F. Thornhill

As stated ealier custom rods are not built for the masses, they are built for a individual for a specific need. Also I believe there is a miss conceptiom when it comes to use of the word CUSTOM .To me it des not mean the fancy wrps and glitter. What custom means to me is does that rod fit me and fill my needs. how does it cast, is it balanced to the rell. how does the rod preform under power. Those of you how wer raised back in 50's and 60's and used to race from light o light or hill raced. Remember the sleeper cars. Those were the plain Jane cars that look like they could not get out of there own way. Well rodbuilders those were the cars that won most of the races.
Good Wraps Bob

80% of all the production rods sold in the US are made overseas, this is big biz with big dollars behind them and they do produce variety and lots of specialized components, if they are not looking to cut costs to increase their profit margin there has to be afew decently designed and massivly produced rods out there. The point being MFG do what they can do relitivelly well and exceedingly well in select: areas, aspects, commponents that come together occasionlly in one production rod, where as custom rod builders can build better than production rod in a one off enviroment excelling regularly on what the builder and client can best colaborate on.

Pawel,
Don't you believe the story about resonant cavities in the grip that increase the rods sensitivity. There are a number of very good reasons why this will not work. The most obvious reason is, with the vibration traveling through the air in the cavity at over 1000 feet per second (the approximate speed of sound in air) and the frequency of a fishes bite being on the order of a couple of cycles per second or slower, the size of the cavity would have to be 500 feet long or longer to be resonant at the frequency of the fishes bite. If the fishes bite were much higher in frequency then it would be well above the resonant frequency of the rod and the rod would not pass the frequency. The vibration would never even get through the rod to the cavity in the handle.





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/27/2006 10:55PM by Emory Harry.

Emory; You are correct ! These so called "resonant cavaties" are nothing more than a sales pitch. If a fishes bite can create resonat frequency that great , i dont want him on my good rod.

jbh

On the resonant cavity thing. This is just a marketing ploy. I expect that kind of thing from the factories and ad people who build and sell fishing rods. What irks me is when custom builders start pushing nonsense like that. It's something that then hurts all custom builders and makes us look like we're trying to pull the wool over our customers eyes. There is some of this going on at some rod building seminars around the country now and it's a real shame. I don't know whether the guys are spreading this stuff out of ignorance or if they are just trying to mislead other builders in order to build up their own ego on something that think they have developed. Either way it's not right. I expect mumbo jumbo from the factory rod people. But I hope custom rod builders can remain above that type of misleading and false advertising.

"While I completely agree with that, the problem I have is that I think those components are not available for a custom rod builder. I mean very specific blanks those rods utilize and, for instance, all those georgeous trigger seats and so on - things I have not found at mudhole or anglersworkshop and other popular sources"

Some commercial makers do source or have made certain items that custom builders do not have access to. But, we can make things that no commercial make can take the time to make. Let's keep in mind that outside of the actual blanks we use, we're not limited when it comes to handles and seats and that sort of thing. A little imagination and creativity can result in a custom rod with components that no commercial maker can match.

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

Problem is the market for those who want those customized components is so small, VERY few builders bother. Outside of asmall # of builders, there isn't enough marketting $$ avaiable to make the customer want to spend hundreds of dollars the way they do for these Factory rods.

Sure it's marketing. What mfg. wouldn't? The part that I don't understand is why people jumped on this speed of sound thing. That has to do with energy waves traveling through air. A fish taking a hook causes an energy pulse to trasmit through solids, ie hook, line, guides, blank,grip, to the hand. Maybe I haven't seen the right ads or web sites, but it appears to me that all they are saying is that as opposed to having a thick layer of energy dampening material like foam, cork etc. between the blank and the hand, that theirs is a somewhat rigid frame attached to the blank with a thinner layer of dampening material over that.

Again, maybe I didn't see the same info as others, but of what I saw this is my opinion.

C. Royce,
The velocity and the amplitude of a vibration or impulse traveling through the rod, line, guides, reel seat and handle material is primarily a function of the mass density and elasticity of the materials. But the velocity of a vibration traveling through a cavity in the handle, assuming that the cavity is filled with air, is mainly a function of the velocity of sound through air, about 1100 feet per second at sea level. If the cavity is not filled with air then the problem gets even worse.

What has been talked about by several people on another board and at some conclaves is resonant cavities, hollow sections, in the handle that improve the rods sensitivity. The story is that vibrations travel down the rod and couple into the cavity that then resonates and amplifies the vibrations. It makes a nice story but the whole thing is totally bogus. It is bogus for several reasons the most obvious of which is how large the cavities would have to be to be resonant at the frequency of the fishes bite as mentioned above.

It might be more appropriate to say that an empty cavity or chamber, or even one filled with rigid but lightweight material, will interfere less with vibration (sensitivity) than one filled with a heavy and/or soft material.

As far as amplifying the signal, all we can hope for in rod building is to do as much as can not to interfere with or decrease the signal any more than necessary. As far as actually amplifying it, well... we'd have to employ some type of additional amplication system on the rod in order to do that sort of thing.

..........

@Everyone
Thank you very much for taking part in this thread. I've read all your opinions with a great interest. You disilusioned me a little bit as regards "resonant cavities" :) - looks like I will have to wait for another "breakthrough"...however, I have a friend who was fishing for the northern pike lately and fish were suprisingly delicate with taking the bait (swimbaits). My friend believs that he was able to fish the pikes only due to the properties of his megabass rod ( called 'jabberwock' or sth like that), end especially "resonant cavities" , that enabled him feel the fish delicate bites. When he used other rods, even with exposed reel seats, he said he had great problems to fish anything.
Of course I realise that this may be the effect of a megabass advertising and so on, or - which is in my opinion quite likely - maybe there was another feature of this megabass rod, apart from "resonant cavity", that was responsible for transmitting the bites, e.g. the blank itself [ there are kind of metal strings in this blank, made of 'aramid' or 'kevlar' or sth similiar]


Best regards,
Pavel

Many years ago Bill Dance used to preach that you will fish best with the outfits and lures that you have the most confidence in. I suspect that your friend, and all of us here, tend to do better when we're using something that we feel gives us an edge. Even if it doesn't, if we think it does, we'll tend to concentrate a little harder and therefore, do a little better when we use it.

...........

Tom,
I think you nailed it!!!!!

Mike (Southgate, MI)
If I don't want to, I don't have to and nobody can make me (except my wife) cuz I'm RETIRED!!

Emory, I clearly understand what you are saying. What I was unaware of was claims of any resonation or amplification advantages of that design. If that is being claimed, then I wholeheartedly disagree with that.

I do maintain that the internal structure of that grip MAY allow for better transmission of the vibrations (via that honeycomb like structure that the grip is mounted on), simply because there appears to be some solid connections between the blank and the grip material. I am sure that only trials could prove or disprove this.

If it did prove to be true, rod builders could easily duplicate it with cylindrical heat sinks attatched to the blank, thin wall tube to the heat sinks and thinner grip material. It would have to be a straight grip as opposed to an ergonomic design, but if there is any better or more distinct feel of whats going on, that could be duplicated.

C. Royce,
I was not going to get into this but....In addition to the explanation above about how big the cavity would have to be in order to be resonant at the frequency of a fish bite think about how big the pipes in a pipe organ are that produce the low frequency notes and they are in the audible range and are much higher in frequency than a fishes bite. A cavity at the frequency of a fishes bite would be much bigger than even the biggest pipes in a pipe organ.

When a vibration or an impulse is transmitted through a rod or any mechanical structure the amplitude and the velocity are a function of the square root of the mass density times the elasticity. The higher the mass density and/or the elasticity the higher the amplitude will be and the slower the velocity will be but only as the square root of the mass density and/or the elasticity. And conversely the lower the mass density and/or the elasticity the lower the amplitude and the higher the velocity will be but again only at the square root of the mass density and/or elasticity. This is true of any material that the rod or the handle is made of.
When a vibration travels from one material to another and the materials have different mass densities and/or elasticities the amplitude of the vibration will increase and the velocity will decrease if it goes from a material with a lower mass density and/or elasticity to a material with a higher mass density and/or elasticity and conversely the amplitude will decrease and velocity increase if the vibration goes from a higher mass density and/or elasticity material to a lower mass density and/or elasticity material. But again only at the square root so the amplitude does not really change a large amount going from a graphite blank to a foam arbor to a plastic reel seat or even through cork. The change in amplitude, increase or decrease, is going to be less than 2 to 1 for any of the materials that we use.

However, a rod like virtually every mechanical structure has a resonant frequency. The resonant frequency of most rods is going to be in the area of 2 hertz or 2 cycles per second. The rod also has a property called Q. The Q of the rod dictates that there is only a very narrow range of frequencies around, or on each side, of the resonant frequency that the rod will transmit vibrations efficiently. In other words it takes a great deal more energy in the vibrations for the vibrations to be transmitted up the rod if the vibrations are not very close to the resonant frequency. Or you can look at it another way which is, any frequency at the tip of the rod that is the result of a fish bite if not very close to the resonant frequency of the rod will be very much attenuated by the rod and will not excite a resonant cavity in the handle even if the resonant cavity were big enough and very, very little of the energy in that vibration at the tip of the rod will get through any handle material to the fisherman's hand.

An impulse, as opposed to a frequency, a yank or jerk or pull by the fish is a bit different situation, and I think a much more common situation, and will be transmitted through the rod better than a frequency but I am tired of typing and I suspect most people that are still reading this are bored by now so I will not go into that. If you are interested in pursuing this further send me an e-mail and we can talk about it without boring everyone else.