I have been excited to try my hand at the new guide concept as outlined in last year's Rodmaker. I have a 5'6" ultralight blank that I plan on running 4 lb lline on and decided to test out the guide spacing today.

After locating the choke guide point for my particular reel I needed a high frame concept type 20, 12, and 8 to take my line straight into a low frame fly rod style single foot #8. Then I used 3 more #8's from there out to the tip. Casting was pretty good. Maybe not too much better than my previous normal type set-ups but a few extra feet maybe. Line flow was very smooth and quiet. I tried a few extra guides on the tip, and also one less but the 7 guide set-up seemed to be the best overall. Distance dropped off with more guides and noise picked up with fewer.

Then for the heck of it I thought to try 4 #6's in place of those #8's. I cast again and now the line noise was much more noticeable. But the distance picked up by about 5 or 6 feet on every cast! I did this maybe 20 times and each time I got my best distance with this set-up. I'm guess the reduced weight on the tip made the rod more efficient as per Rodmaker's constant instruction. But I can't figure out where the line noise is coming from.

I think I will go with this one. I find it hard to believe that the smaller guides gave me more distance but I can't argue with the measuring tape. I like the new guide concept and will try it on a heavier spinning rod next week. It's very light and takes the weight off the rod tip. Better balance too.

Hi Kevin. Warren here. This will be my last post for a while so after today I won't be able to answer you back for some time. Hospital & an operation. At any rate I rebuilt a spinning rod for my son a couple of months ago and ran into the same thing. I finally had my son do the casting while I did the watching and I was really amazed by what I saw. The line "cone" behind those 1st 3 choke guides actually builds up directly and I do mean DIRECTLY behind the guide and yet doesn't touch the blank or at least not on that particular rod. The noise you hear is the "front" of the cone hitting the frame: or that's what it was with my son's. We then tried different spacing and different sizes and styles of guides for another 3-4hrs but the "frame slapper" was the one that gave the best performance."Go figure"!
The rod is 71/2 ft. and 10lb Maxima Perfexion mono is the line. Obviously the weight,bulk and mass of the lure affects the "frame slap" and we got very little with a 11/2oz Hopkins Shorty and quite a bit with a 5/16oz Yo Zuri. How much damage will this do to the line over time is the question and that will be answered in good time. Meanwhile he'll just have to keep a closer check on his line. My $.02 worth. Warren.

Ok here is a thought,
What if you try different lines! Try a braid or extra limp etc, etc. You have made me think this out.
Mark Schulte

I have noticed if I use Power Pro I can use smaller guides and it makes for a better sensitive rod. This is for freshwater rods if the rod is for saltwater then I go with a larger guide for the leader knot.