ALPS Deep Pressed Microâ€™s/ALPS mini guides & tips

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Posted by: Steve Gardner (---.nc.res.rr.com)

Date: December 14, 2010 08:30AM

In the past I have given enough honest feedback on Batson products to the point that a few times Iâ€™ve been accused of working for them. So I wanted to head of any criticism by making it clear that;
I do not work for the Batsonâ€™s, they do not send me money; have never even taken me out to breakfast, lunch, or dinner).
Nor do they sponsor me (perhaps that will change one day, but not as of yet).
But I do consider them friends, along with Bill and Lance at Swampland, Jason Brunner at St Croix, Stephen Pratt at CTS, Bob McKammey, Scott Parsons, and a few other supplier/Manufacturers.
All of who have on occasion sent or given me product to try or experiment with, sometimes asking for input and design feed back, sometimes not.
_________________________________________________________________________

Batson being first to import Micro guides to the US for custom builders, chose to take the long road in developing their next generation â€œALPSâ€ version of micro guides and for a couple of very good reasons.
1. There was nothing wrong with their first generation guides, (Iâ€™ve tried every brand and still prefer the Batson Microâ€™s) after handling some 2000 or more, and seeing only 4 fail, one of those was on a personal rod that was absolutely my fault, there was no need to rush.

2. With some of the other companies jumping on the band wagon in an effort to catch up. In hastening to bring their guides to market, and consequently dealing with failures and having to pull back and punt (redesign) several times because of the problems of not understanding the market (specifically the US bass rod market).
The Batson Team IMO chose to wait until they had designed the right guide.

Advantages I see in the new design:
1. Obviously the Alps design further strengthens the insert to frame connection, and with only seeing 4 failures in the past I can safely assume this should lesson that percentage.
2. For those liking a longer foot to make construction easier and a few extra thread wraps
for more holding security. They have lengthened the feet by about 16 percent.
3. They have beefed up the frameâ€™s thickness adding to the guide frames strength.

Now here is were IMO the new design really excels
They have replaced the arrow head design at the end of the foot with a swelled out design on the foot base before it turns up for the neck.
The advantages to this are
4. It widens the foot print at the point of were most of any sideways torque to the guide occurs. Making it stronger at this point creates more stability and better distributes any pressure across the blankâ€™s surface:
5. They have also added a curvature to the underside of the foot to better conform to the blanks radius, especially out towards the rod's tip where it is needed the most.

After hearing the concerns of a few that had a couple guides pull out. I did much testing to see if I could find out why. One of the things I did was to start using un-died silk, allowing for a transparent wrap. This makes it easy to see the guide through the wrap. One of the things that surprised me was the amount of tunneling I saw even with these tiny guides.
This led me to the conclusion that some (if not much) of the concern about pullout was due to the tunnels effect not firmly securing the guide in the wrap. With that gap between the end of the wrap and the arrow head at the other end, it could allow for some slippage forward when under pressure creating enough momentum to allow a guide to pull out.
Moving to the wedged out design forward to the base of the neck should make any tunneling behind that of little to no effect

6. This puts the swell at the point of the greatest amount of epoxy further strengthening the guide to blank connection.

Some of the microâ€™s that have come out recently have narrowed down the neck in an effort to allow a Forhan locking wrap to more securely hold the guide in place. IMO opinion this is the worst thing that could have been done! Doesnâ€™t make sense to remove material from the most stressed part of a guide (the neck) in an effort to secure it to the blank
7. Widening the foot at the base of the neck accomplishes the same benefit with out sacrificing the structural integrity of creating a narrower neck design.
8. Although Iâ€™ve not tried it yet, the new design may even eliminate the need for a locking wrap for those who prefer not to use them.
9. There are also intentional slight width variations on the sides of the foot frame allowing for what I can only describe as a visually unnoticeable staggering effect on the thread wraps which should further increase holding efficiency
10. Additionally for those of us who prefer a shorter foot widening the frame at the base of the neck allows for the foot to be shortened or ground off for less or easier thread wrapping with out loosing the benefit of the previous arrow design.

Batson braced Tip Tops,
FINALLY!
Not sure just how large of a tube they will be available in yet, but have one with 6mm tube on hand. 4mm insert.
The actual brace design should help eliminate or at least lesion line tangle.
Positively better then none-braced tips, with a slightly larger bracing structure then some of the others.

But still suggest that on rods seeing a lot of tip abuse or using heavy lines on spiral wrapped rods people should stay with a larger 6mm tip. Simply for the structural strength the more material in them provides.
But for anything else these should be perfect.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/14/2010 08:40AM by Steve Gardner.

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