From March 1st to 3rd, Mick Hinton and myself, joined custom rod builder Terry Sturgeon with T. Allen Rods at the Tampa outdoors expo. During the expo, we had visitors test the Microwave rods against cone of flight and Concept rods. The response was overwhelming!! Terry brought 35 custom Microwave rods with him and we sold 43 with 8 on order. The fallout has been huge from the 300 casters and orders are piling up for T. Allens Microwave rods. If you are not using the Microwave guide yet to help sell your custom rods, we highly recommend that you do before they become mainstream and the general fishing public can find them on factory rods. The general public was amazed! The key is that people must cast it next to traditional guide trains. Because it is so new and different from what anglers are used to, they are stand offish. Once they cast it, it is undeniable.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions or for more information on how to give the Microwave Challenge yourself.

Ben Stein
American Tackle

Why limit custom builders to guide sets with 6mm runners?

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"Angling is extremely time consuming.
That's sort of the whole point." - Thomas McGuane

And to follow up on Chuck's question.....how am I supposed to sell the concept that this guide train is the right size for everything....from ultra light freshwater trout to bluewater pitch bait to surf casting.

Russ in Hollywood, FL.

Those were a couple questions I had as well, but I must say, my son and I did the test casts and were amazed at how well that system works. It's pretty stunning. Am attracted to the idea of using a bit less rod to get the same distances.

I am with Jerry....it just works. I am personally setting up 2 rods as we speak to perform the challenge at our MRB Round Up and at shows that I attend during the summer months and just to have customers see the difference. If you have not tried them, you need to.

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Super Tight Lines......Don

With regards to the runners, do any of you find that there is an improvement with changing out to smaller sizes such as 4's or even 3's? Or have you seen a decrease in the performance with the smaller runners? Just curious to hear the opinions of others.

Tom

I have not tried it with smaller runners, have not seen a reason to try it. They are just so smooth. I can't say for sure but I bet they tried it before releasing the set with 6's, why wouldn't they. Ben?

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Super Tight Lines......Don

I guess the only reason that I thought they may have kept them at the current size is there would be zero issues with knots... I figure since the current size work well why wouldn't a smaller runner would work even better if you've no need to pass knots.

GO to teh AMtak site, there's a Microwave tab at teh top. Then a tab on FAQ's, it answers why they did things the way they did.

Problem i have with the guides is i build alot of competative SW rods where people run 20lb to 40lb Leader on their 2-4kg rods and with the 5mm guides i see issues with the leader knots, there difinately is a market for a set with minimum ring size being 8mm.

In a few months, the commercial rod manufacturers will have the MicroWave system on their rods. At that point, any uncontested edge the custom builders currently have in offering this set up to the public will be over. Why leave money on the table for someone else to pick up? Right now, custom rod featuring the MicroWave system can be sold at a premium with no competition from any commercial rod maker. I've watched this same thing take place with the NGC, micro guides, etc., and it's a shame that more custom builders don't take advantage of the sales potential available with something like this until it's too late.

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I would love to use them on more of my builds. Unfortunately I can't afford to spend 30-40+ on a guide set that I won't even use half of, and then need to purchase more running guides because I choose not to use those huge runners that you are forced to buy with the set. Amazing system, but bad marketing for the custom builder market IMO.

But if using it allows you to charge an additional $100 to $150 for the rod, which you could easily do, then you're ahead, not behind, regardless of what running guides you use. Throw the supplied running guides in the garbage and you're still way ahead. Surely you'd charge a premium for a rod with the MW system on it, wouldn't you? What earthly reason would there be to charge your usual price for a rod featuring a system that no commercial make currently offers?

There are a lot of good custom builders out there, but only a very few seem to have any real business savvy. I don't mean this as a slight, but all things considered, most custom builders seem to miss out on the very things that could greatly bolster their business and they do so at every turn.

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I am just a new builder and it sure would help to have some suggested guide spacing for rods over 7' 6" I am building two 8' 6" steelhead rods and i purchased an extra running guide for each. I guess I will go with the 7' 6" guide spacing add a guide then test and see what it looks like.

Frank,

Set the guides the same as the 7'6" put add an extra 1-3 running guides.
Add just enough guides as needed for any rod, to allow the line to follow the contour of the loaded rod. The thin part of the rod flexes more, so the guides need to be closer together. The thick part of the guide flexes less, so can be further apart.
Start with the first guide at 20 inches and go from there. If you do some test casts, you may find that you will move a guide up and down the blank a bit to have the optimum setup.

Good luck
Roger

Well,

For my fishery and my clientèle, I just don't build many rods that would use the guide sets. But, if I did, I do think I wouldn't be so quick to hard sell this or any guide system to a client and then charge a hefty premium once they agreed. Of course, if they were hot for it, I'd certainly build it but at a similar profit margin. To me that's sort of like charging a hefty premium above the standard build profit margin for doing a spiral wrap - you can't buy those off the shelf from manufacturers either.

If this was my primary income, I would certainly think about how charging such a suggested premium might effect possible future sales with that customer. For me, I wouldn't dare jeopardize that kind of lifetime clientèle relationship business model I work under for a one-time boost in profit.

But hey, I do see other people's point of view. That's just not how I like to do business.

As to the above commentary about single guide purchasing and smaller sizes, if AT wants to make only sets available then so be it; I'll buy their product then only when I can build a rod specifically appropriate for that set. If my build needs an extra guide or two or a smaller size, then I'll simply explain to my client that AT doesn't allow me the flexibility to make a more appropriate set of guides for their rod and we'll have to find some different guides that are more appropriate to their build. If that leads us away from AT guides for that build, then that is ATs loss. I'll still be building that rod and making my profit...

Hi All,

By coincidence I was just discussing offering a smaller guide train to a manufacturer today. All our testing to date has indicated the 5mm guide had the widest appeal and the best performance. That is not to say that with other stripper configurations we can't get ideal set ups with a 3mm running guide. Rome wasn't built in a day and we'll get to it sooner rather than later. The tooling is EXPENSIVE and the process takes months to complete w/all the tweaking and design changes etc. We're doing all we can to keep up with what we have but we will eventually get to offering more flexible guide set offerings with smaller running guides. Don't forget micro guides which manufacturers consider anything under a 6mm is a small segment of a huge market. Manufacturers don't do segments for the most part they are big picture people interested in huge swaths rather than small niches. The niches are where the custom guys flourish so that is a good thing.

Btw Tom is right you will see these MWG's all over the world in the coming months on commercially built rods. In my opinion commercially built will never match the quality of a custom rod built by an experienced builder. My view is that any custom built rod here in the states should never ever try to compete with mass produced rods from China. With that said I think there will be increased demand for all that is MicroWave in the future and you should be able to get a premium price for the rod regardless of the China made price.

A little secret we have the first sample order of casting MW guides due in next week. We'll have 300 sets of each style in stock. Get them while they last which won't be long. Be one of the first to own a set it will be historic.

Joe Meehan, ATC

Altruism aside, there is nothing unethical nor immoral about charging a higher price for an item that provides the customer with better service, performance and/or value. Provided the builder is not misleading the customer, and the customer understands what he or she is getting and agrees to the price, then no one is being unfairly treated.

A handful of builders are now taking advantage of the sales potential here, but not as many could be. My point is simply that the commercial manufacturers will soon remove any exclusivity from the MicroWave System that the custom rod builders currently have. And, most fishermen when given the chance, will buy commercial rods over custom for reasons we all know too well.

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Joe,
I think that there are a lot of builders who would be interested in purchasing only the microwave guide by itself.

Then, they would select the guides that they wished for the running guides.

Roger

Hi Roger,

We want to make sure that the system we do exhaustive research on, is not compromised. If anyone can send us a set up whether it is a different layout or guide train that out performs what we currently offer we will be glad to make it available. If we are shown a 3mm running guide works better or if the transition guide is not needed we will offer it. We are only interested in performance. And if we are shown our system can be enhanced we will offer it.

We envisioned all kinds of different layouts, guide trains etc which would be detrimental to the performance of the product hurting the market acceptance. We wanted control over it's ultimate performance so the reputation wouldn't be harmed. We think it has worked out well, not perfect but well enough.

Going forward we'll have more flexibility variety and offerings in the MW line. Look for smaller running guides, different stripper size options including sw spin & casting which is now in development.

Joe