TackleTour

BRONZEBACK32 wrote: ↑

Mon Feb 10, 2020 7:13 pm

HobeyBaker wrote: ↑

Mon Feb 10, 2020 6:41 pm

Looks like they will be using AGS guides on the new Xtremes.

https://m.bassmaster.com/gear/st-croix- ... ew-xtremes

I wonder why they chose that guide?

From what I have heard is they can break easy and are hard to replace.

The replacement guides will be definitely more hard to get, but my friends have rods with these guides and never heard them complaining. If you take care of your gear, this should not be an issue.

I've been fishing rods with AGS guides for quite a while now and they are fantastic. I haven't had the first issue with any of them. I don't make it a habit of stepping on my rods or carelessly jamming them into rod lockers either, but any guide could be damaged by mistreatment.

I've had the opportunity to handle a few of these new St. Croix Legend Xtreme rods. They definitely have a high end look and feel to them. I'm looking forward to fishing with a couple of them pretty soon.

bronzefly wrote: ↑

Wed Feb 12, 2020 11:57 am

I've been fishing rods with AGS guides for quite a while now and they are fantastic. I haven't had the first issue with any of them. I don't make it a habit of stepping on my rods or carelessly jamming them into rod lockers either, but any guide could be damaged by mistreatment.

I've had the opportunity to handle a few of these new St. Croix Legend Xtreme rods. They definitely have a high end look and feel to them. I'm looking forward to fishing with a couple of them pretty soon.

How do the AGS guides handle braid to leader knots?

BRONZEBACK32 wrote: ↑

Wed Feb 12, 2020 12:15 pm

bronzefly wrote: ↑

Wed Feb 12, 2020 11:57 am

I've been fishing rods with AGS guides for quite a while now and they are fantastic. I haven't had the first issue with any of them. I don't make it a habit of stepping on my rods or carelessly jamming them into rod lockers either, but any guide could be damaged by mistreatment.

I've had the opportunity to handle a few of these new St. Croix Legend Xtreme rods. They definitely have a high end look and feel to them. I'm looking forward to fishing with a couple of them pretty soon.

How do the AGS guides handle braid to leader knots?

I don't fish braid to FC leaders personally, can't stand them. The literature that's widely available from Daiwa indicates not to pass knots through the guides. I know a lot of guys who do it and I haven't heard them describe any problems doing so.

bronzefly wrote: ↑

Wed Feb 12, 2020 1:09 pm

BRONZEBACK32 wrote: ↑

Wed Feb 12, 2020 12:15 pm

bronzefly wrote: ↑

Wed Feb 12, 2020 11:57 am

I've been fishing rods with AGS guides for quite a while now and they are fantastic. I haven't had the first issue with any of them. I don't make it a habit of stepping on my rods or carelessly jamming them into rod lockers either, but any guide could be damaged by mistreatment.

I've had the opportunity to handle a few of these new St. Croix Legend Xtreme rods. They definitely have a high end look and feel to them. I'm looking forward to fishing with a couple of them pretty soon.

How do the AGS guides handle braid to leader knots?

I don't fish braid to FC leaders personally, can't stand them. The literature that's widely available from Daiwa indicates not to pass knots through the guides. I know a lot of guys who do it and I haven't heard them describe any problems doing so.

I fish 10 lb 832 to a 6-8 lb flouro leader with a FG knot and I can't even tell that there's a knot. They pass knots better than recoils, but not as good as Torzites or SiCs.

If sensitivity is on par with the godly NRX I'll consider buying the rod.

CheezusCrust wrote: ↑

Wed Feb 12, 2020 9:18 pm

If sensitivity is on par with the godly NRX I'll consider buying the rod.

It's still the same SCV/SCVI blank at the core. The new AGS guides will add some sensitivity, but the blank is still going to be the biggest factor in sensitivity. Popular opinion seems to indicate that NRXs are on a different level than SCV/SCVI rods, and I doubt these are going to be radically different than other SCV/SCVI rods even with the AGS guides. Maybe there would be a chance if the current Legend Elites with Titanium Torzite guides were almost on par with NRXs, but again, popular opinion seems to point towards no.

That's not to say I don't like this new line of Xtremes. I really enjoy the SCV/SCVI blanks personally, and the AGS guides are intriguing to me. I'm not a fan of the handle, so I'm hoping that this use of AGS guides isn't just a one-off, and that they end up using them on a rod with a more "standard" cork handle in the future. Also, if Daiwa is willing to sell them to St. Croix now, who knows, maybe we'll eventually be able to buy the AGS guides separately for use in custom building (please please please Daiwa!).

Yeah I'm kinda mind screwed over the AGS guides being made of carbon fiber because carbon fiber dampens vibrations that's why carbon fiber bike frames are so comfortable compared to aluminium frames

CheezusCrust wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 14, 2020 10:11 am

Yeah I'm kinda mind screwed over the AGS guides being made of carbon fiber because carbon fiber dampens vibrations that's why carbon fiber bike frames are so comfortable compared to aluminium frames

have u ever tried the ags guides?

Yes

CheezusCrust wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 14, 2020 11:28 am

Yes

but you still feel that the AGS guides dampen vibrations? or are you merely saying because of the AGS guides being made of carbon, you're baffled that they went that route?

I didn't feel like they dampen vibrations nor did I feel they amplify vibrations.I'm just saying it's kinda funny the engineers at daiwa would make guides out of carbon fiber because they themselves know the vibration dampening aspect of CF.A heat treated hardened alloy would make more sense but that's just my 2 cents.

CheezusCrust wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 14, 2020 1:17 pm

I didn't feel like they dampen vibrations nor did I feel they amplify vibrations.I'm just saying it's kinda funny the engineers at daiwa would make guides out of carbon fiber because they themselves know the vibration dampening aspect of CF.A heat treated hardened alloy would make more sense but that's just my 2 cents.

There are several other factors, that I'm sure Daiwa is aware of, that factor into the sensitivity of CF frames vs titanium or steel. It's not as simple as comparing CF and aluminum bike frames.

Weight of guides is one thing that can affect the overall perceived sensitivity of a rod. If the CF frames are lighter than the titanium or steel equivalents, then it may allow the rod to be more sensitive overall, despite CF being less sensitive as a standalone material.

Stiffness also plays a likely factor. AGS guides are stiffer than titanium and steel guides as far as I could tell handling an AGS rod in a store. This plays into the weight factor as well; in order to match the stiffness of the AGS guides, you'd have to make the titanium/steel guides thicker and therefore heavier than they need to be.

Durability/"Fishability" is another consideration. I'm sure a lightweight ceramic guide frame would transmit vibrations even better than the materials we're discussing, but they'd be useless in terms of durability and you couldn't realistically fish it. This doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the guides, but what I'm trying to get at is that there is a reason that we use carbon fiber rods and not aluminum rods. An aluminum rod might transmit vibrations better, but in order to be light enough it wouldn't be strong enough to do any amount of serious fishing with it; it could very well be that CF being used for a guide frame has similar characteristics, and therefore AGS guides really are better when you take the whole picture into account.

Hard to say when they haven't been tested extensively. Since I haven't tested them myself, I can't say anything definitive of course, just overall making the point that it's likely more complicated than you're assuming, and they may very well be more sensitive. With that being said, as far as I'm aware, nobody has compared a Daiwa Tatula Elite AGS and a regular Tatula Elite in depth to say for sure whether they make a difference over steel guides; I'd definitely be interested in seeing TT do an in-depth comparison. Although, even then, they don't make the exact same rod with both sets of guides, so you really can't make a direct comparison without stripping some AGS guides off a rod and putting them on the exact same blank as another rod, and almost nobody would really want to do that given the price of AGS rods.

Rods are made of graphite not carbon fiber.

Note to self: time to make use of the ignore feature on this forum.