I just got back from the FLW Championships. One of the factory rod producers had a huge display with their full (or almost) compliment of bass rods. These rods go in the $345 range. I was amazed at the poor quality of work. I never really paid that much attention and was able to see that many at one time.

Here are things I noticed -

Guide feet not completely covered under wraps
Gooped epoxy on the handle where the butt cap was put on
A tip not aligned
Crooked guides
Less than straight decal

Various rods had different things going on. Again these were all on the $345+ rods. Maybe I just have more attention to detail than I used to.

Alex if you stay for the weigh in on the final day be careful -

If the first place fisherman was using one of the rods you describe stay clear of that booth -

You will be trampled when all the Wanna Bees rush the joint to buy a piece of the action!

Not a one of them will notice a single one of the things you mentioned!

They will sell out!

John Ballard was there selling his rods - You can look all day and not find the things you note on his rods!

If you see him tell him Hi for us!

I just started this rod building thing, in fact, I just finished my third rod. I went visiting my buddy in the tackle shop the other day, and was looking over some of the "high-enders", and having just built my first few rods, the things I saw on those $300+ rods were appalling to say the least. Big gaps between threads, uneven epoxy work, big ugly glue lines were the things that really stood out to my newly somewhat trained eyes. I never really bothered to look closely berfore, and I saw more of the same when I looked at my own rods when I looked closer. My very first rod build, which I expected to be rough and ugly due to being my very first try, came out better than all of my factory built rods.

I understand that they are in business to make a lot of rods, and that their attention is on producing numbers of rods and not on fine details, but geez, you would think that for the money spent on the big name rods, you should at least get some kind of quality control.

It was definitely an eye opener to see what makes it out of the factories and on to the store shelves with their big name labels and price tags on them. I think I may not ever buy another factory built rod. I guess the old addage "Nobody is going to take care of your stuff as well as you will" applies. Besides, I have found that building my own is fun.

Heck, Alex...I've been in high end flyshops and stared in awe at the fact that some of the rods selling at TWICE the price range you stated have guides that are poorly aligned to say the least. We're not talking offset strippers here, these are halfway down the rod and way out of line.

Funny thing is, shop owners just blow it off and say "must've been a careless customer that whacked it around" and they leave it and hope it escapes notice on a sale. Now, you just can't move a guide that far out of line and not damage epoxy, thread, or even the rod. This slop was from the factory.

Apparently, folks don't notice these types of things when shopping. Ever wiggle an assembled rod and find some pretty questionable ferrule fittings? Bad feel nothing, some of the cane rods made locally around here actually have an audibly bad fit in the metal ferrule. One doesn't have to feel the slight misfit when assembled, it can actually be heard when someone else wiggles the rod. They sell anyway!

Not a biz guy myself, but I do a few favors every now and again. So many higher priced rods advertise features like guides wrapped with regards to spine or general straightness of blank. Either is good, but the rods I've done minor repair on didn't seem to be assembled with regard to either. Ironically, the owners still tout the great advantage of these features. Granted, stuff like that can be thought of as minor as far as function goes, but it's part of the advertising and one should get what they are paying for.

Haven't noticed bad guide placement yet but what gets me is that my $100 rods have better cork and reelseats than $500 factory rods.

Agreed.. I see some shockers in Australian tackle shops. 6-800 dollar rods with $2.50 reel seats, poor cork, cheap guides not to mention the dodgy threadwork. I even saw on which had obviously had the tip broken and the shop owner had glued on a replacement and get this, not even a matching top, no binding or finish and it was still marked at full cost!!

I can honestly say that apart form the odd specialised rod, I will never buy a factory rolled rod again.