In looking at a few, mid grade, rods that I use and they have heavy insert guides. My feeling is that the rods can be crisper and more sensitive with light weight guides, I put in an order for a bunch of Minima guides to try on a couple of these rods. Are there comments on this?

Remove the old guides and rewrap with the minima guides. Much lighter and will change the entire personality of the rod. The rod will feel crisper and more responsive. I assume you are asking about spin rods per your other posts. If these are spin rods, use the minima M guides for the reduction train (16M, 8M, 5M; or 20M, 10M, 5M), and minima F guides as runners. As I have mentioned before, I like size 4 runners. Set up as a KR concept. The entire set will weigh less than your ceramic stripper currently being used.
Norm

The minima guides is well known to be an excellent long lasting very light guide.

If you are dealing with a slow rod blank do not expect changing guides will turn it into a crisp, fast action rod.

As Phil says, but will certainly take a lot of the sloppiness out of the blank giving it lighter, crisper and more responsive feel. I have done this more than once and it works!

I like and use the minima guides.

When you first built the rod you had some expectation of its performance and after using it you developed a "feel" for the rod and compensated for its inherent characteristics and any short comings.
Now if you change out the guides the characteristics of the rod will be different than the original build and will take on a new personality. At this point you have to start over and develop the new "feel" for this rod and adjust for its new characteristics and short comings. Hopefully it will meet your expectation.
In any event it will be a good project and will result in expanding your knowledge and experience.
Go for it!
Good luck!

John

Thanks for the assurance. The first rod I'm going to do is a fast action ML I use for trout and redfish with 10 or 15 lb braid. I'll report back when I finish it in a week or two.

They make them in titanium frames also, I picked up and compared an exact set of each, a very noticable difference in weight.

Spencer, which titanium frame did you try? The titanium chrome or the titanium Ti black.? Been thinking about the Ti black but seems a little expensive.
Norm

Norm,
The ones I have are the natural Ti frame with the chrome ring, didn't know there was now another option.

The titanium TiBlack came out last year, and are a minima 4. The titanium chrome is a minima 3. A nine guide set (20M, 10M, 5M, and six 4Fs) plus tip top top in the TiTi Black costs $56.80, and the Ti chrome costs $27.60. The chrome stainless costs $10.70. Big differences! The stainless chrome set is extremely light and the titanium chrome set weighs next to nothing.
Norm

Don't overlook the Air Wave guides from American Tackle, light weight plus the Doug Hannon novel stripper guide. Competitively priced with the Minima guides. I have used both and will continues to do so but prefer the Air Wave due to the Hannon stripper guide.

Ray Zarychta
Glastonbury, CT

Alex,
It will make a very noticeable difference, I have two identical higher end rods that I show to people, one wrapped as it came from the factory, and one rewrapped with an Airwave stripper, followed by a size 7M minima, then size 5 microwave ceramic choke guide and TITI minima size 3 to the tip with a size 4 ceramic tip top (all black guides) and people are amazed at the difference, much crisper feel to this set up, the lower the power, and slower the action of the rod being rewrapped, the more noticeable the change is. If asked about using different guides (mfg, ring material, style, ect.) I always answer that that is what custom is about, the best choice of component for that particular guide......You cant swap the front left tire with the right rear tire on a nascar like I can on my wifes Honda CRV, it's custom.