It's not enough weight to affect loading and too close for stress distribution. AJ s wind knot theory is as good as any since all we have is conjecture. 

Its St Croix proprietary ultra sensing blank/guide set up, helps you catch fish when the bite is tough  

So come to find out, none of our theories were correct. I contacted St. Croix about this just out of curiosity and basically they said they put their micro guides closer together to provide more opportunity to hold the line off the rod blank given the reduced height of the guide feet. They also said in they future they may go away from that and reduce the number of guides.  

Using an extra guide or two makes sense but should be further back where the Rod flexes. I'm not surprised they're changing this. 

5 hours ago, WIGuide said:

So come to find out, none of our theories were correct. I contacted St. Croix about this just out of curiosity and basically they said they put their micro guides closer together to provide more opportunity to hold the line off the rod blank given the reduced height of the guide feet. They also said in they future they may go away from that and reduce the number of guides.  

I have a few st. croix rods that have that guides close to the tip like that but they don't have micro guides. I wasn't even aware that st croix made any rods with micro guides. 

36 minutes ago, Nick S said:

I have a few st. croix rods that have that guides close to the tip like that but they don't have micro guides. I wasn't even aware that st croix made any rods with micro guides. 

The Rage series that was recently discontinued had Pac Bay minima micro's, the Avid X's have Kigan Z micros, and the LTB's & Xtremes a have Fuji's modified micro's, They might not be as small as some other micros out there, but they are a lot smaller than the traditional guides. 

1 hour ago, WIGuide said:

The Rage series that was recently discontinued had Pac Bay minima micro's, the Avid X's have Kigan Z micros, and the LTB's & Xtremes a have Fuji's modified micro's, They might not be as small as some other micros out there, but they are a lot smaller than the traditional guides. 

Yeah I have rage and ltb rods. I wouldn't consider either of them to have micro guides, but I guess there's really no standards when it comes to what is considered a micro guide.