I have been researching the various methods of the spiral wrap and I like the simple spiral but on the 7' bass bait-casting rod I am building with micro guides the line was very close if not touching the rod as I loaded ithe rod to test placement. I moved the stripper guide less than 10 degrees off of top dead center and it made all the difference.
So my question is, does that stripper guide have to be at zero degrees or can I go with a small adjustment without ill effects?

You can go a few degrees offset if you wish, just make sure the line doesn't stack heavy to one side as you retrieve hard pulling lures.

One other thought, if the line was close to touching the blank, it's not the Simple Spiral that's at fault - your stripper guide is simply too small or too low.

..............

Thanks Tom!
I figured that the stripper guide height was the culprit but since this is my first build I wanted to get experienced thoughts. I was hoping to get by with the fewest guides possible, I may reconsider and go with the revolver too. This is a jig / worm rod so no issues with hard pulling lures, just hard pulling fish I hope. :)

I rotate the first guide 60 degrees, the second 120 degrees and the third is at 180. I don't use micro guides. It is important that the direction of rotation is to the left for a right hand reel and to the right for a lefty.

The argument can be made that if you use a reel with a level wind feature the first guide should be at 0 degrees to relieve pressure on the level wind as it won't have to push the line against the lines rotation. I fish hard and often with both level and non level wind reels on the 60/120 degree configuration and haven't harmed my level wind reels.

Don

Mark,
I have tried all sorts of combinations of sizes and placement of guides on spiral wrapped rods.
I have found that for virtually every case, I need to offset the first guide about 5 -10 degrees in the direction of the guide spiral to have the line stack correctly on the reel.

No issue at all to having the first guide off set a few to many degrees.

Roger