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You can cut a reel seat off with a hacksaw. Cut diagonally and spiral around the seat, then pry it off. Once off, use a heat gun to soften the epoxy and arbors and cut/scrape them off. Another seat will cost you about 10 bucks, cork tape a few bucks, xflock shrink wrap about $17 bucks. The new seat will need to fit over the butt of the rod. Build arbors with masking tape, fill the gaps with epoxy and slide the new seat on. It is not hard to do, but will cost you one or two hour's labor if you can't do it yourself. Before you try this you might want to see if you can enlarge the offending original hood with a dremel tool.
Alternatively, you may do better to send it back to St Croix, get a new rod, sell it, then have a custom built the way you want it.
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