redmeansdistortion

The Millionaire platform was made from '98-'23 in many iterations, the oldest being the CV-Z and most recent being the CT SV released in 2019 and the mountain stream oriented Stream Custom released in 2023. That's 25 years of production on the same platform and they are nearly as customizable as the ABU Ambassadeur. Parts are a plenty out there with spool options ranging from 28-34mm, gear sets available from 5.8:1-7.2:1 and a host of other modifications.

It's really hard to say. In the past, manufacturers were more concerned about reliability with performance being secondary. In those days, the end user was responsible for making something smoother or perform better. This is how super tuning came about. Guys would fine tune the reels by polishing friction areas, shimming out slop, using lower viscosity oils, thinner greases, and that sort of thing. Sometime in the 90s and 00s, manufacturers took note of what bench tuners were doing and incorporated it into their new products, but as a result, reliability took a back seat to some degree. Modern reels tend to have more points of failure than the old dinosaurs. Not that the manufacturers intended that, but it's a side effect of the ever more complex designs we see today, while older ones were comparably much simpler. These newer reels are super smooth, but it can come at the expense of reliability because there are more parts, and thus more to potentially go wrong. If I were to give a nod to any newer reels that I believe will pass the longevity test; Daiwa Millionaire CV-Z and Ryoga platforms, Shimano Calcutta B and Calcutta Conquest platforms, and the Shimano Stradic/Vanford/Vanquish/Stella platform. These are reels where the engineers designed around both performance and durability, and they are/were priced accordingly. Notice I have no Daiwa spinners included, and that's because they run a helical oscillator gear made of nylon which is very prone to breakage. I've replaced 8 of them this year, a mix of Tatula LTs and Ballistic LTs. In one of the Ballistics, the actual frame mount broke off where the oscillator attaches. Reading back in my reference to Shimano, they use level wind oscillation which is far more durable. Daiwa only uses that in their tournament spinning reels now, they abandoned the design for the rest of their products when the SS Tournament was discontinued 3 years ago.

Those are very nice too and come in a variety of sizes. I really love the SS Tournament from Daiwa, such a great reel and was in production for 35 years, from '87-'22. Something I just learned about them from a friend, SS Tournament reels in the 1600 and 2600 sizes dominated ACA and ICFS fixed spool distance competition for nearly 30 years in the 7.5g single hand event and the two hand 18g event. The reasons for their dominance were weight and line lay. It took until around 2015 for the Stradic style Shimanos to start replacing them in competition. Even the smaller 700 and 1300 sizes are mini long cast reels.

Oh yeah I get those too. I just did a Zebco Cardinal 3 for a guy, inherited it from dad. His dad bought it back in the 70s but hadn't fished it in probably 40 years. Really nice shape externally, but on the inside, the grease was hard, weak bail springs, and a little bit of sand. I went through and did my thing, and now it's going steelhead fishing here in a couple of months. These reels are super famous among steelheaders here, mostly because you can take them bushwhacking and you'll still be fishing. For as popular as these are, they're also very overlooked. With the right spool, they're fantastic. Drag is low with a max of ~4lb, but that's plenty for light line fishing. This is probably my favorite designed spinner; it's simple and performs spectacularly. Abu made the mistake of not running with the ball after the C series, the successor to the original made from '84-'90 or so. A company named Daysprout still makes the Cardinal 3 in limited runs every year or two. They use original ABU tooling to recreate them, and now they make them in Japan. What's funny is that the foot still says Made in Sweden, but that's because they're using the original tooling. A new Cardinal 3 runs about $450+, and most are seemingly bought by collectors.

There comes a point where it makes more financial sense for the owner to cut their losses and just buy something new. This is something I experience often with charter customers where the parts and labor will cost more than a brand new reel. Most of them run cheaper Okumas like the Coldwater and Convector. Their customers are notoriously hard on the equipment. With recreational guys, my only true exceptions are the more sought after older models, just because you can't get them new anymore. Even then, I'll recommend they buy a nicer used one and have me go through it. I understand doing what the customer wants, but it saves us both time and money to recommend new if the situation warrants it. Labor charges can add up quickly. I had a guy some years back with a Shimano Baitrunner he said he dropped in the sand on a Florida trip. I opened it up and it was nasty in there, full of sand and salt. The labor charge alone was $120. I sent him pictures of the progress and he seemed all giddy. The final tally was ~$160, $20 shy of a brand new one. After a month of unreturned calls and texts, I sent him a certified letter stating that he had 60 days to pick up his reel or it will be considered abandoned property and sold to recoup any losses. Gotta CYA, even doing reel work. I got a whole $80 for it, around what they sold for used at the time.

I've never heard of them, but I'm sure they exist. Ceramic coating can provide a very slick surface compared to bronze, brass, or plastic bushings. On the builds I've done in the past, I'd polish the insides of the bushings to a mirror shine, then apply a thin film lubricant.

I wouldn't worry about bushings. While a bearing is typically smoother, a bushing is more durable. As long as they aren't used in the spool, there isn't anything else concerning. I've built out my share of bushing reels over the years, especially ones where durability was higher on the priority list than end performance. These were mostly for guys fishing salmon in the rivers where taking a dip or getting your reel wet is very common.

That's exactly what I ordered, saw you post about it in the past and it got the gears turning. This new handle setup let me shed about 8% of the weight, down from 7.6 oz to 7 oz.

I grabbed a RCS 35mm handle and adapter to put it on my Daiwa SS 700. What a difference it made, seriously. That pivot mechanism in the factory handle really sapped a lot of the feel, and this RCS handle makes it more pleasurable to use. I'm going river smallmouthin' Friday morning, and I'll be using this.

Spider Wire had an infomercial in the early 1990s that seemed to kick off the craze. That stuff was very expensive for the time. I remember seeing spools at the tackle shops for no less than $20, often approaching the $30 mark. One could purchase a halfway decent reel at the time for similar money. Good monofilament like Maxima was about $5 per spool. I remember a friend of mine bought a spool of Spider Wire and filled up his Shakespeare Sigma baitcaster with it, he ended up getting a hell of a backlash deep into the spool and had to cut it out. His old man was livid. I never saw that man spit fire like that, even when his son got a drag racing ticket a few years later.

I should also say, not all companies follow that trajectory. It's typically European and American companies because we're fixated on growth. Japan is different in that they tend to focus more on quality, and often leave companies be that they've purchased. A good example of this is Clarion. When they bought McIntosh Labs, they let them keep doing what they were doing because of their quality and reputation. If it's working, why mess with it?

I think something others are missing in their crusade against Chinese manufacturing; they will build as high quality of an item you want, you just have to pay for it. This can involve more precise manufacturing methods or even a change to a higher quality material. I say this as somebody relatively fluent in the auto industry, who obtains countless parts from Chinese vendors. The accountants have predetermined a price point that must be met as agreed upon with the engineers, which means they get what they pay for. If they want better, they pay for it and pass the cost to the consumer. Chinese labor isn't any less skilled than we are. It comes down to money. For a company pumping out thousands of products, even a difference of a few cents will have an effect on the bottom line. There's a very good book one can read about this written by Bob Lutz; Car Guys vs Bean Counters. It details how great companies are founded by enthusiasts and eventually fall from grace when the accountants want to fatten up the balance sheet for investors. Innovation slows, quality declines, and eventually you're left with a company relying on brand recognition and not the quality they established earlier in their history. Investors only care about the performance of the company at large; is there a return on investment or not? They seldom care about the quality of the final product unless it's affecting ROI. The perfect example of this in the fishing world is none other than Abu Garcia. Read their history up until now, and it's easy to see their slow downward trajectory between 1984 and 2025.

You'll have to fish the Grand River, there's just about anything you can think of in there. Smallmouth, largemouth, steelhead, brown trout, etc. Bring some fishing stuff with you. A one day license is $10 for both residents and non residents.

This. For those of you in Michigan and Ohio or anywhere Meijer has a presence, they sell them for $20-$30 from time to time. I've never seen them advertised that cheap, but when you go to the small fishing section they have, you'll see them marked down on a semi regular basis. I say small section because it's really only a quarter of an aisle and maybe a couple of end caps these days. When I was a kid in the 80s and 90s, they had at least 2 aisles full of fishing tackle, and the ones closer to popular fishing spots had a good 3 to 5 aisles and sold everything from budget stuff to mid and even some higher end. I bought my first nice reel, a Daiwa SS Tournament 1300 at Meijer back in '92. It cost $100 then, which is closer to $250 adjusted for inflation.

Burned the midnight oil and redid this new old stock Ambassadeur Black Max 1600C last night, even shot a video from start to finish. This baby is smooth! I'm still waiting on the spool. It should've been here a month ago but as of right now USPS has a stop on packages from Vietnam to the USA. My spool has been sitting at the Detroit post office since June 24th, no idea when it will show up. A little rundown; NMB spool bearings, ultralight blue brake blocks, carbon drag, Haneda Craft 70mm handle, Avail star wheel, Avail tension knob, and a Pro Max titanium nitride line guide to round it out. I'm going to fish it on a Major Craft Days 6'5" 3/16-1/2, should be right at home.

Detroit River, Lake St Clair, Lake Erie, and Lake Huron. No sense in me rating them, they're world class and very well known.

That's right. Vacuum tubes are a big export from the USA, although most of what we export are transmitter tubes that are seldom used in audio, unless you're one of those animals with a space heater that is a PSE 845 amp 😆

I wish I did at that time but I was still running soiled state. 15 years ago is when I started building my own and prices then we're just starting to get up there. That Japanese bought up the classic American tubes for pennies on the dollar, then turned around and charged an arm and a leg for them a short time later. I'd love to get my hands on some NOS 45s or something like that.

Even for people like me that build their own amps, preamps, and speakers, it really adds up. I don't have any truly higher end stuff, but it's better than what 99% of others are running. If you want nice tubes, accurate drivers, and the components that tie them all together, get your wallet out. Hell, the 2A3s, 6SL7s in my "power" amp set me back about $800 altogether. Add in the chassis, choke, and transformers then we're approaching the $1500 mark. That doesn't even account for the wiring, caps, resistors, or diodes. I unfortunately have that amp in storage now that I have a couple of toddlers running around. When they're old enough to keep their hands off, it's coming back out.

I'm in Michigan so I don't get salt reels too often. When I do, they're usually customers of mine that travel to the East Coast or Gulf Coast. I've never had anything that salty come across my bench, but these are people that might fish the salt a few days per year, so no prolonged use. Usually the really bad ones I get have grease that has turned to wax, but nothing major beyond that. Hopefully your shop is charging by the hour for those types of jobs. Some places charge a flat rate which can mean lost income after so long. I learned my lesson of charging by the job about 6 years ago when I was tasked to service some Daiwa Seaborg electric reels. Thankfully they never saw salt, but let me tell you, those things have a planetary gear system, drive belts, and more shims than anything else I've ever seen. Daiwa recommends they get sent to them for service. With my customer, he bought them from Japan on eBay and Daiwa refused to service them. He got a smoking deal on service from me though 😂

Some of my customers are still fishing with the Ambassadeurs and Cardinals they bought with paper route money they earned in the 60s and 70s. Nothing ever needed to be replaced, save for the occasional bearing and drag washer.

I'll never forget when I purchased my first modern round reel, the Millionaire CT SV back in 2020. When I took it out of the box and put it in my hand, I was completely blown away. The quality was and still is out of this world. The gearing in it is insanely smooth, and it doesn't even use micro gears either. It's the reel that made me leave low profiles behind for good. Like fishing with a Cadillac.

It's a good thing you haven't been here, yet. Every time I say I'm taking a break, something else catches my eye. I get lost in a world of possibilities, start bidding, pinch my cheek, then head to Yahoo Auctions and Hedgehog Studio for parts. Earlier today I showed @bulldog1935 a sunset orange 4500C that had me itching. I said no, then alerted him of the reel to see if he was interested. He and I both showed exceptional restraint today. On that note, I'm a round reel nerd. They're a lot of fun, more parts to choose from than you can shake a fist at, and they're truly simple, yet effective machines. Simplicity is lost on all reel manufacturer today with the exception of Isuzu. Simplicity works very effectively. Simplicity is easier to service in the field if need be. Simplicity is a minimum of parts, and thus less to go wrong. You won't dare catch my trying to reseat a torsion spring at camp, but put an ABU in my hand with the pack-in wrench/standard screwdriver tool and I can fully break it down and reassemble it and get back to fishing. This is lost on manufacturers today as they whip their horses after the carrots of bearing count, max drag capacity, speed, and lightness. Anything to move large amounts of product. I get it, they need to make money, but they're totally overlooking the buy it for life crowd. That's a feature, not a bug.

Not to change the subject, but a 3wt tied up for a spinning reel is probably the best panfish rod you could have. One of my friends has an 8' 3wt with a Michigan handle and casts tiny jigs for bedding bluegills with 2lb Ultragreen.

I too have both. They're both excellent reels and the SE really shines in the neighborhood of 5g+ and the BFS is good down to 1g or so. Take into account the baits you'll be using. I can fish a variety with a SE. A 1/8 jig with a 3" Easy Shiner weighs 6g, right in the wheelhouse of the SE. The 2.8" Fat Swing Impact on the same jig weighs 7g, again, SE territory. The SE also has a centrifugal brake which won't actuate as readily as the FTB brake in the BFS model. Let your intended lures help you with your choice.