Am I "old school". I taper my guides down from the butt (example #12 stripper,#10 guide #4's #3's #2"s and finish #1's) . I noticed when I went to the batson site that they had their guide spacing charts for their rods. On say their 9' 5 wt rods all they used were #3's and #4's. I was at a Sportsmans wharehouse the other day and was checking out the production rods of St. Croix, G-Loomis and others and they were doing the same as Batson. I do static test and casting tests with my guides and have built several Batson rods my way and they cast nicely. Is this the "newest" trend or are there advantages to having that type of sizing? Have I had my head in the sand?

The "old school" way really never made much sense. Most guys used all those guides simply because they were available, not because they did anything for you.

The line path is actually straighter with fewer guide sizes. We've shown photos of this in past issues of RodMaker. If you were to set up with the scenario you mentioned, 12-10-4 a couple 3s, several 2's and then 1's and really took a look at it, you'd find that a system where you used something like 12 - 8 and then all 1's would give you a much straighter line path.

Think about a funnel with straight tapering sides. Now imagine one where it tapered, ran straight for a bit, then tapered again, then ran straight again for a little bit, then tapered again. You get the picture.

As far as any difference in casting quality, it won't be much. Maybe even not enough to notice. The main benefit, albeit a slight one, is that with fewer guide sizes you reduce weight on the upper half of the rod, which is generally a good thing.

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Ok that makes sense to me, except for the weight reduction part. The reason I say that is, according to Batson's chart, they had the same number of guides (10) and the smallest was a #3. I think it was a 12, 10, 4-#4 and 4-#3, so wouldn't those, even if only slightly, weigh more than tapering down? I think I will try some experiments with this and see what i come up with. thanks

Batson is only half way to what Tom was describing. Generally whatever the smallest size guide you would put anywhere on a rod you can use anywhere else except for maybe the first guide or two. The rod I used at the ICRBE casting competition used all 4mm micro guides the entire length of the rod, I wouldn’t go as far as saying that was the reason for the performance but it obviously didn’t hurt.

Right. If you already know you can use a size 1 without difficulty, then you go move right on down to that size pretty quickly and get rid of some weight.

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