Score, just found an ole Allstar GT40X in my collection. Guides have are thread wrapped then expoxy coded. Thought was was a Castaway rod at first.
Going to give it a good cleaning, rig it up and see if its all that remember.
Test it out this afternoon.
Now where are my Castaway rods? Digging deeper.

Asked a few buddies to look through their junkyard of rods for certain brand rods.
Have some trade bait so we will see what turns up

Almost all of mine are Falcon. Many are 20 years old. I miss when academy was selling Falcon and you could take a broken rod in and walk out with a new one. I was in Odessa when Academy put Lowriders on clearance for $25. I bought all they had. I’m set for life.

I don't care about the rod warranty. I take care of my equipment and do not bang it around. No need for that at all. I choose the brand and the power of the rod I use based on how it performs and how sensitive it is for "feel" baits and how well it flexes for moving baits. I have some rods in the $130 range that I really like and some all the way up to $600. For me, it all depends on the performance of the rod for the technique I am going to use it for. That matters most to me. I love technique specific equipment.

Sounds like you just need some ugly stick rods to use. I don't beat up my equipment so I choose better stuff.

Why do both of you step on your rods?

He's right on the x- ray blank. I upgraded to some lowriders in the academy rod riot days and loved them. Got out of fishing shortly after and now back in and decided to upgrade all to lowriders. Bad thing is they are made in China now. Still nice but not like those early 2000 models. So I decided for Christmas I was going to build my dad a NFC X-ray worm rod since they had their black friday sale. Built just like my Amistad but a whole lot of bells and whistles. He almost didn't get that rod for Christmas. With all the bells and whistles it's a little more than a Cara but sensitivity isn't even in the same ballpark. The x- ray felt like a part of you. I'll be going all x- rays.

Falcon all the way... They're great people to work with... Dan

Most of the time it’s an accident. Sometimes I stomp on one, but not on accident.

When I started fishing again in the 80’s it was value, all my rods were Berkley Lighting rods. In the 90’s I wanted technique specific, I replaced all my rods with Castaways. Early 2000’s I got 3 GLoomis rods( 2 IMX and 1GLX worm rods) with my new Ranger. They were the best item in that purchase. Over the next couple of years I replaced all my Castaways with 19 GLoomis rods, for their performance. I use GL 3 for fast reaction baits and GLX and IMX for slow soft plastic / jig baits.
I’ve had these many of rods for over 15 years. So their value has been great.

I ride the line between price and performance, the rods I have do come with a warranty but I have never used it, I think I might take a rod back to the store if it failed day one but other than that I accept the fact that I may have caused some damage for it fail later on....

its a wonder any rod companies give warranty have you been to academy lately an seen all the rods returned i would bet less than 25% were manufacturers issues.

This for sure. I used to buy the most expensive rods in existence but with them reaching to the $500 range I'm going to have to look for the happy medium. Probably cut off @ $250 and a minimum of $100. I figure fiberglass based cranking rods will cost a lot less and hold up but my jig and worm rods I'll spend the big bucks.

Try Phenix. Its my understanding custom rod builders use their blanks and are good blanks...and rods overall in my opinion. I like my phenix feather better than my cashion icon and my cashion icon was more expensive

Performance first.