onthewater102

Intriguing post. I think to a certain extent they have because you can cover water more quickly with them if you want to.

Gear ratios were perverted as a marketing ploy a long time ago to the point they're all but meaningless now. Gear ratio differences don't directly equate to line retrieval speed. The spool size can vary from reel to reel and more than make up for the differences in the gearing in many cases. Look at the line retrieved per turn. Your 6.3:1 could retrieve just as much line as a different 7.0:1 (ie - have the same "speed"), but it will have more torque available to you to horse fish out of heavy cover.

Those are some awesome looking baits. I like the way you used a wire eye in the bottom of the pony head jig instead of a swivel as the mold calls for - that ball bearing blade has to be fantastic.

The combo match was purely by accident - I made this rod and several others on the same color scheme over the last two years and found the phantom only a few months ago. I can't vouch for their assertion that it's made of 7075 aluminum, but unless they're straight up lying it is an unusual alloy selection for sure.

I don't know where I'd order parts for it besides replacing the entire spool, but the centrifugal brake holder can be disassembled without a problem, I took mine apart already once just playing around with it and put it back together without an issue. The aluminum alloy used in the gears in this is 7075 T6 - a fact I confirmed with Piscifun directly while writing an article on this reel for a different forum. It has over 3 times the shear strength of brass. This is not a typical alloy to be used by reel manufacturers (typically they use 2024 T3) which is probably where you've seen aluminum gears end up weaker than their brass counterparts. I just sent a pair of Quantum Smokes back to the factory for warranty repair because they used that cheaper alloy among a long list of other inferior components. I've been building rods for a few years now, those MHX rods continue to impress me - especially at their price point. You can shop around the different lines and find some exceptionally lightweight blanks. Speaking of which, I put one of the Phantoms on a 6'9" Med Power Fast Action (one of my hand built rods using an MHX blank) and weighed it fully spooled with line...9.4 oz for the rod, reel & line: By comparison, an empty Gen 2 Abu Revo SX weighs 9.0oz by itself:

I became disenchanted with name brands delivering no-name quality internals 10 years ago or so and started looking into the materials the internal components were constructed of and found out about the Pure Fishing group slapping brand labels on imported products, many of which were at different price points in the market and yet contained inter-changeable internal component parts. Bass Pro Shops Pro-Qualifier Rather than pay for the overhead of operating all those name brands I searched out one of the store brands Pure Fishing was attributed to distributing and was very happy with the Bass Pro Shops Pro-Qualifier line of baitcasting reels, which had a dual braking system only available on brand name reels costing roughly 2x the amount at the time I bought them. With their one-piece aluminum main frame and plastic side plates, brass gears and stainless bearings I had those reels for between 7 and 9 years (I bought several over time) and sold the last them (all still working as well as they did on day one) last month for $50 each. I tore them apart during the off season, cleaned and re-lubricated each one and they lasted. Piscifun Phantom Recently I was intrigued enough by the lightweight of the Piscifun Phantom and dropped down my $60 to get a test subject. It uses a carbon composite frame to get the weight down to 5.6oz, which didn't turn me off to it since it does achieve an extremely light weight (normally I stick to reels built on an aluminum one-piece frame). Internally they spare no expense - it uses high tolerance stainless shielded bearings throughout, 7075 alloy aerospace grade aluminum for the internal crankshaft and main drive gear, along with metal for the thumb-bar, its linkages and other internal components and a machined 1 piece 6061 aluminum spool (ported so that it weighs in at 14 grams with the bearing!) The only plastic internals are the sprockets to drive the line-guide worm gear and the yoke, all of which are plastic even on $400 top of the line Shimanos so these aren't strikes against it. Judging by the quality mechanical components inside it this is an excellent reel. Clearly it makes use a composite frame to save huge amounts of weight not as a cost-cutting measure. After getting my hands on one and pulling it apart side by side with a Gen 3 Revo SX I turned around and ordered two more - the Abu was FULL of plastic components!!!.