Fuji Concept Guides with a VS/Zee Baas?

[rickhern]

I recently rewrapped a GSB1321M with Titanium Coated Wire Frame guides by pacbay. These have no inserts. The idea was that since I am so clumsy and hard on gear, I would gladly sarifice a bit of performance for durability(broke way too many hardloys). Started with a 30, 7 guides down to 12's. I have to say that while it looks a little weird, it casts great! Lighter and more responsive than with the previous setup with Hardloys. I use a ZB25 on it and certainly see no lack of distance ad possibly a small gain. The rod just seems to fish better.

[numbskull]

The guides you are referring to are LCSGs, also called lowriders. They come in size 20 down to 6, have a long footprint, and do best with long rods (11 feet and up).

The other concept style guide is a BMNAG which come size 40 to 8 and are much more like standard guides with a u shaped frame.

Lowriders, the LCSGs, tend to be heavy (at least the sic versions, there is an alconite version as well) unless you go to the titanium versions (T-LCSG) which are very nice and very pricey (about $160-180 for a set and a tip to match).

Because the lowriders use a small first ring, the first collector has to be mounted further out the rod than "normal". On rods 11 feet and up this is no issue and they are a popular guide for long rods casting thin braid at high velocity even from very large spooled reels.

When you get into shorter rods, things get trickier. You can still use them, but the distance to the first collector needs to be optimized by testing and often seems to be specific for one reel/line combination. The other issue is the guide's long foot print that inhibits the flex of the tip section some. The way around this is to run the first several guides as LCSGs (say 20-12m-10) then go the rest of the way to the tip with closely spaced small guides of a different type.

On shorter rods, it is not clear to me that they add any great distance advantage, but if you pay for the titanium they do make for a much lighter crisper set up. The titanium also lasts forever.

I've got a GSB 1321L built with the T-Lcsgs and love it. I plan to rebuild a ssu1201mh with the modified T-LCSG to TKWSG setup....but I suspect it won't be any better a rod than if I just used BMNAG's starting with a 30-20-12-10-10-10-10-10-tip (which is one helluva lot cheaper, simpler, and probably more versatile). We'll see.