What fly guides do you suggest? Like the ceramic insert type, no snake or guides without inserts. thanks for your input.

I don't know this for a fact, but I suspect that you have as much weight in your finish and thread as you do in the guide. So I think you are better served with a single foot ceramic guide than a double foot wire style. I personally like the ceramic insert guides because I feel that they shoot line better (again, I have nothing to prove this besides my subjective experience) and hold the line off of the blank a bit as opposed to the snake style guides.

Greg: Emory Harry's excellent article in the latest (V8/3) issue of Rodmaker has data suggesting that the weight of thread and epoxy is about 50% of the weight of the guide itself (short, single wraps of A thread on small guides).

I have been using American Tackle's Titan guides recently. My first reaction was when I picked up the package: it was noticably lighter than other packages with the same size and amount of guides. I'm all for anything that will not impede the rod's response, especially near the tip. They aren't cheap, but I think that good components are worth it. I'm thinking of trying Fuji's titanium/ceramic guides, but the price is significantly higher than American Tackle's product.

I haven't got my issue yet. I can't wait to see the numbers. Does he have guide weight comparisons showing snake vs. ceramic vs. titans?

Greg: Emory's article isn't focussed on guide weights, he just needed some data on that aspect as part of a study on how extra weight affects the resonant frequency of rods. Still, there's more data there than I've most anywhere else.

Refering to single foot guides only.

Bill,
I just went into my shop and measured the weight of some guides. This might help you.
The weight of a single footed #6 chrome fly guide was 0.20 grams.
The weight of a single footed #6 ceramic guide was 0.24 grams.
However, I think that this is misleading because the hole size in the single footed ceramic #6 is much smaller than the hole size of a #6 fly guide. It is necessary to go all the way up to a #10 ceramic to get a hole size that is about the same as a #6 fly guide. The #10 ceramic weighed 0.65 grams. So to get the same hole size in a ceramic as in a chrome fly guide it will be necessary to increase the weight by about a factor of 3.
The foot length on single footed ceramic is quite a bit longer as well so the thread and epoxy will also be heavier unless you choose to shorten the length of the foot of the single footed ceramic.
All of the guides that I measured were Forecast. You will probably find the weights to vary slightly from manufacturer.
By the way you can get a little digital reloading/jewelers scale on @#$%& for about $30.