So I was looking up the MH retail pricing for the next build and noticed a big jump in price. Looking at the titanium rv guides and the 25 comes in at a bargain of 97.99, SiC is 69.99. If you go to klh the torzite 25 is 54.79 and SiC is 44.79. My question, is this the same ring? $10 more in one frame, and $28 in another? I don't understand fuji pricing, never did. Feel like Im getting screwed here with a 25 torzite rv unless someone can clarify

I fish saltwater and my favorite guides are alconites or hialoys. I have not seen any need for more expensive guides. On any new popping spinning rod I use the Microwave guides. I recently built a 60 lb. class rod and am working on two surf rods and one 30 lb. class rod that will have hialoy guides on them.

Ouch, the better part of a Benjamin for a guide. I'm going to show that to my customers who cringe when I tell them that their hand made agate stripper guide on their bamboo fly rod costs $30.

Fuji prices have not changed. You are comparing a single foot guide to a double foot. It cost Fuji a bloody fortune to develop TORZITE, and two years of time working with the best ceramics engineers in the world. Then a huge investment in the RV guide frame for both development and tooling. If you're looking for an argument you'll have to go somewhere else. They're expensive. If you don't see the value in Fuji products there is little chance anything we say will change your mind. If you do see the value, you won't settle for less.

Complete selections of some of Fuji's best guides are available now in a very economical CONCEPT "O" ring, an improved Aluminum Oxide that deep presses beautifully into the MN, LN and other concept guides (the EXACT same quality, polish, construction etc. as the most expensive guides Fuji makes). Still, once you've made up your mind that Fuji is expensive the extra 50-cents (compared to others) for a size 10 BLNOG seems more than some can bear. Fuji tries very hard to make something for everyone, the only thing they seem to refuse to do is compromise.

Dennis, the best is never the cheapest. I was shocked by the price also. However, after using them on a few builds (musky rods) I've been shocked at the noticeable difference in weight and performance.

Jeremy

After straying from fuji guides for a while and getting what i consider to be defective product from other guide manufacturers I am now back with Fuji.

I usually use Alconites on most of my builds and I have been very happy with them, I also do not see the need to go titanium at least for freshwater that I fish.

What I was really dissapointed in the most from other guide manufacturers was the guide feet themselves. I was finding bent guide feet and also pre ground feet that were incredibly un-even, with spear tip points and very, very, sharp edges. When you have a person pre grinding the guide foot in some factory overseas and they have whole buckets worth of guides to do then its no wonder quality goes out the window.

With fuji's I get a perfectly prepared guide foot every time becuase i get to do it myself, not some one who hates thier job or gets paid barely at all.

I have also had guides from other manufacturers with hardened glue on the inside portions of the guide ring, not sure how those passed QC, if there was any QC at all.

Never once did i find a defective Fuji Guide in my orders, sure it can happen with any guide brand, but with Fuji's its far less than other manufacturers, despite the perfect looking guides in other guide manufacturers ads and much lower price.

Quality does matter, I will always use fujis as a result.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/05/2015 06:51PM by jason vandeusen.

It is pricey and I do not always use them on my personal builds but if I want a ceramic guide I am going to be using Fujis. I have had too many issues with guide inserts popping out of other manufacturers guides. I put Titanium SiC micros on my last build and I really am pleased.

I was asking about the ring not the frame. I don't have a single foot to compare ring size to a double foot. Was just saying that the size 25 ring in single frame is a difference of $10 from torzite to SiC and in double foot almost $30. Frame is not in the equation

I'm not familiar with all guides, but I am familiar with Fuji and another brand that has had Y type titaniums on the market for a long time. The Fuji's are an order of magnitude better for frame strength than brand X. All titaniums are not equal, and Fuji's are bulletproof.

Every rod I own is fuji titanium. Last build was klh torzite and build before that my stripper was about equal to the rclb blank price. Dont need a lesson on fuji quality, I have paid for them and believe in them. I am asking why a 25 RV guide is not $79.99 instead of $97.99? What is the difference in a rv 25 ring and a kl ring? Why is a 30 kw torzite guide which should use more material for frame and has a larger ring $75.59? The SIC version is $61.15 only a $14 difference. There is no consistency and the numbers seem arbitrary. If a ring x costs so much and ring y costs so much, the only difference should be x-y as you switch frame styles. It doesn't seem to be that way at all. Any thing Im missing here?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/06/2015 09:10AM by Dennis Hamilton.

Dennis, it is a combination of the ring and frame being a double foot that accounts for the wide difference in price. If you compare a double foot Titanium SiC to a double foot Titanium TORZITE you should see around a 30% higher price. When you consider the larger ID of the TORZITE and the ability to drop down a ring size and maintain the same ID particularly on running guides you find that you can go with TORZITE for only a few dollars more than SiC. Quite a few builders are using SiC for reduction guides and then TORZITE runners for the lightest upper section they can get. For very little extra money.

Jim I was only initially comparing the rings in the same titanium double frame when I noticed the difference. Here is a few tkw examples:

40j torzite 103.99 Sic 82.35 Difference $21.64
30j Difference from Previous Post $14.44
25j torzite 57.99 Sic 45.29 Difference $12.70

One would assume that the ring cost of rv should be comparable to kw if not the same exact ring. The cost of RV Torzite is 97.99 and SiC is 69.99 Difference $28. That is not consistent with anything and by material costs I would expect around $12.70 more like the 25kw. Just seemed abnormally high, even for fuji, so I wanted to bring it up.

I see Dennis. We have a standard mark up across the board. I'll forward the question to Fuji and see if we can get an answer. Give me a couple of months. ;)

For a while, I worked in a gun store. Everything in the store was marked at 15% above the cost of the item. But when you go to a department store and see a shirt that you like priced at $50 and then a week later it is on sale for 40% off you will realize the profit they are making. The aren't going to sell the shirt for a loss. They have to make at least 15% to make a moderate profit. I have used ceramic guides from Fuji, Varmac and Perfection Tip co's for years and like them all.. The mfg sells to the distributor at one price and the distributor adds his mark up and sells to the dealer who then adds his mark up. That is just the way it is.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/08/2015 04:39PM by Randolph Ruwe.

Anyone selling products at a 15% markup sure wouldn't be in business for long.

The were in business for at least 10 years that I worked there. I wanted something to get be out of the house when I retired.

Dennis I went back a reread your original question to try to glean anything I could about the products you were comparing and finally noticed the "main" difference. The new RV guides use a new FLANGED TORZITE ring, a design improvement that is substantially more difficult and time consuming to manufacture. Fuji research concluded that past ring configurations could be improved with a design that assured the line coming from the spool was "reduced" or choked by ring material rather than frame metal. Coils cast through the RV not only have a single leg to eliminate any possibility of line slap, they also assure that line contacts the super smooth surface of the TORZITE ring that flares out over the ring frame. The rings make the guide disproportionately more expensive than other rings. Hope this helps.

Thanks Jim for the clarification. Putting the rod components together now and trying to decide the runners to make the final desicision on torzite or SIC. I am still leaning towards the ldb if I go 6 because I have had a few issues with kt frames and have found the ldb to be superior to kb with frame flex. Only have the SiC option there. Not many guys using them yet on heavier surf rod applications, so the ideal size 8 kb or 8 ldb in torzite will probably never exist. Gunna run the numbers this week after payday and see if the funds permit me to go torzite rv to kw8 since I might want the ability to pass knots on this build. If you start offering fuji lay-a-way sign me up.

Love when somoene posts a question and people don't answer it and just post for the sake of posting giving useless information. Kind of like what I'm doing now, after Jim fully answerred his question.

THe TLDB's never took off, they werent' marketted here and one thing we all know about rodbuilders and fishermen - they are sheep followers and will not do anything other than what they see someone else do. I've gone through over a thousand of the TLDB's, they are the best single foot Titanium guide ever made for SW rods.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/13/2015 10:25AM by Billy Vivona.

...now if I could just get Fuji to put the KB foot on an LDB frame....what a beast that would be.