I am building a BC 8' rod with NLG guides 16 12 10 8 6 6 6 6 6+top and here is the problem. The tip of the rod is 7.5 and can not find any Sic tops 6-7.5 size. Is it OK to use a 7 size top and 6 size runner guides or should I replace the 6 size guides with 7 size? - don't really want to do it. Any ideas please? Thanks.

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It is not going to hurt anything using a larger tip size. If you want to use a tip with the same ring size, you can get the biggest tube size you can for the 6 top and then split the tube open with an #11 blade to open it up to fit the blank. You slit the tube on the opposite side that the bracing attaches to the tube, open it up and then use some epoxy to apply it to the blank. Then wrap as usuall. The other thing you could do is use a 6 guide wrapped as the tip, it is been shown here before how it looks using a guide as a tip. One thing also, you really don't need all the different guide sizes you listed. Unless you need the 16 guide to get the line high enough away from the rod, I would start with the 10 then 8 and 6 on out to the tip. It will take a bit of weight off the rod. The guides you listed is something I use to use many years ago, mainly thats how we did things it seemed. But with what I have been doing with micro guides, most of my rods that are the older setups are going to get a transformation this winter and stripped of the old guides and replaced with smaller and micro guides where appropriate. My newer rods with micro guides opened my eyes up to a better performing rod, so the old rods will get changed.

A lot of guys intentionally use a tip with a larger ring than the running guides. They do this because the ring in the tip top sits closer to the blank than the rings in the guides do, and therefore the larger-ringed top lines up better with the rings in the running guides. If I were in your situation, I'd use the 7-7.5 top and not think twice about it. You might even grow to like this setup better.I don't think it will affect the rod's performance much one way or another.

Your situation is common in some kinds of surf rod building. If you build a surf plugging rod where the only thing that's going to pass through the guides is braided fishing line (no knots or swivels), then you can use very small running guides, size 6 or (if you want to get bold) even smaller. These kinds of setups can work exceedingly well on surf plugging rods, but the top can be a problem, because surf rods have thick tips, and you're not going to find a top with a 9 or 10 tube and a 6 ring. In these circumstances, you can either use a guide as a top, or (what I do) just use the smallest-ringed guide you can find. Going a size or two bigger on the top than the running guides is no big deal - the rod will fish great. In fact, after you're done building it, and you've taken it fishing once or twice, I bet you never notice the difference in ring size again. It's not a big deal.

Thank you guys for the info. I have always had those problems:
- use the same ring size runners and top and the top as a whole looks smaller - a step down - than the rest of the guides or,
- use the top a size larger than the runner guides (never tried this before) and hope to look good.
When the guides and tops are designed and built, how come they don't see the problem and build something that looks better as a whole? and why don't they build tops in all sizes and ring configurations?

Also have another question about Fuji guides but I will start a new post.

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