Is Hardloy, Hialide, Hialoy, and Hard Alum. Oxide all the same thing just under different brand names and maybe different color? I assume these are an upgrade to those normally refered to as Aluminum Oxide, right?

I THINK that they are the same. I doubt that there are any actual materials named Hardloy, Hialoy, Alconite, Nannolite,, etc. I THINK that they are all registered trademark names for vaious brands of Hard aluminum Oxide guides!

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!!

I tihnk the hardloy, hialoy and HAO are, for all intents and purposes, the same thing.

fuji says that hardloy is a special blend of HAO and that the alconite is different.


I would venture to say that the nanolite (AT) is comparable to alconite, zirconia would be a step above that and halide is the same HAO.

You'll be hard pressed to get actual numbers from anybody to distinguish differences between the names and materials. More important to think about who constructs guides better, than who uses better material. Ceramics are good. Wire is bad.

Here's a dumb question regarding the above information on guide material. Can the Hialoy/Hardloy guides handle superbraids in a Salmon/Walleye Diver rod trolling setup rod? Charter captains will beat you up on price all day long if necessary. I have been using SIC guides, but that leaves little for the piggy bank when you consider the hours invested in an 8.5' trolling rod. I don't want to risk downgrading to Hialoy or Hardloy guides to find out that the boys eat them up and spit them back at me. Kind of off topic, but worth asking. Anyone brave enough to find out already?

In a word, YES! Any guide (ceramic) on todays market will handle any line on today's market. The majority of the charters on Lake Erie/Lake Michigan use $49 Eagle Claw/Shakespeare rods with braid/leadcore with no problems whatsoever

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!!

That is the reason I asked. Most of the repair/replacement business I get is due to guide failure, especially on Dipsy rods. The factory guides get grooved out, usually from braids. Are the factory rods using that crappy of guides, or will the Fuji's, Pac Bay's, etc... ceramics fail as well? Maybe that is the same question, just more specific. I may try some Pac Bay Hialoy guides on my own rods and see what happens. I can't however duplicate the hard use the charter guys are famous for. They are hard to build for, and even harder to keep happy. They beat the @#$%& out of stuff and expect you to be able to build a rod that will take what they and more specifically, their clients dish out.

I use a lot of the PB Hialoy and the braids will not groove them. I've used these for many years, now.

Putter
Williston, ND

From personal experience;
I have been using braid since it first hit the market.
I use it in about 60-70% fishing situations.
Some years I fish as many as two hundred days.
Much of that in bass tournament competition,
I have yet to have any ceramic guide grove.
I mostly use Batson and Fuji guides.

Here are some data from another forum-I have not been able to confirm it with other info, but they sound consistant with what I've been told before. I'm not sure of the tool used for these hardnesses, but I expect it is Vickers.

Stainless Steel: 400

Chrome: 1000

Aluminum Oxide: 1200-1400

Alconite: 1300-1500 (Based on the name ALconite, I expect Alconite is Aluminum Oxide, but have no data)

Nanolite: 1800 (I've been told Nanolite is much less brittle than SIC, so there is a tradeoff between the two)

Zirconia: 1000-1400

Zirconia PVD: 1600

SIC: 2200-2400

I've read that early braids were much harder on guides than today's braids. I've used braid for years, and on some pretty cheap rods, and had only the tiptops groove. I've read that any of the ceramics can handle braid today, but have no data. I now use Nanolite on all my rods for the guides, and use SIC or Nanolite for the tiptops. Have had none of them groove, but don't have years of experience with them.

Mick