What say ye on the use of PB Minima guides and braided line? Are any results from hardcore use in at this time? Still too early to say?

The Minima guides have been used for many years on the Berkeley, Fenwick, and other Pure Fishing products. They haven't a good history with braid over the long haul. I've changed many Air 7 Berkeley salmon/steelhead rods back to ceramics.

Spencer,

Why have you changed the Air 7 guides? Because of grooving? Or breakage? Breakage is different from grooving due to braid.

In my contact with the manufacturer, I believe they said in all the years the guides have been out, they only had one case of grooving. Your experience is otherwise?

To be fair, the Minima rings are currently coated with TiN or TiCH which are harder but they are very thin coating.

I really would like to know the verdict on this and your actual experience is very relevant.

Mo

I used them in their original form back in the mid-1980s and never had any issues with grooving. Although to be fair, braid was not a hot item at that time. Most fishermen still used mono exclusively.

I have a test rig going with a windshield wiper motor pulling a section of braid over a rod ringed with the Minima's. It runs 24 hours a day and is currently loaded with 3lbs of weight.

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Make sure to let us know how the guides do Tom, if not on the board, please email.

How long do you plan to let it run? and how long has it ran so far?

DR

Tom that’s a good idea!
Are you going to test with both clean line and lines that have picked up debris form fishing

No, just clean lines. Most of the debris picked up from fishing drop off as they move across the tiptop.

I just some sort of indication what the rings are capable of. It may be possibly to determine the total length of line pulled across the guides and translate that to how many retrieves a fishermen could expect to make before having trouble. Of course, the load would be different for retrieving a plug versus fighting a fish so this isn't really a viable means to anything more than just see if the rings are inherently incapable of handling braid for any length of time.

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The hard chromed S/S ring, black framed guides of the Air 7 salmon rods grooved tip tops with braid, though a few others have shown wear.
The rods originally had ceramics on them when the braids came out. No problems to speak of except from customer abuse.
I had a half a big coffee can of the new guides within a few years, coming mostly from the heavier powered salmon rods, but then they were the ones that used the most braid. They didn't hold up any better to customer abuse either that I saw, still seen a lot of bent ones.
Years ago I think I had another post here about them.