There has been a discussion underway between me and @bogfrog about rod materials. There are some things in that discussion which may be misleading to people looking for a new rod.

   One of the things said was " .... Toray is a proprietary material available from only one company...."   This statement is kinda misleading. Toray is not a material at all. Toray is a company.    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toray_Industries

   This company makes many different items, one of which is carbon composites.   https://www.toray.com/products/prod_004.html

   And Toray has proprietary materials. https://www.toray.us/toray/life/filtration.html

   And proprietary processes (3rd paragraph)   https://cs2.toray.co.jp/news/toray/en/newsrrs02.nsf/0/F4FF9471A8CBCF16492584F5001F5352

   I guess a better way to have stated it would have been, "Toray has a proprietary material available from only Toray."

   Toray has materials available for the competitive "graphite" market. https://www.toray.com/products/carbon/car_0020.html

   It looks like they have already brought to market a graphene-impregnated prepreg.   https://g-rods.com/pages/about-us-2

   I would guess that this is the material that @bogfrog referred to when he said, " ... Some of bbthe new nano carbon blanks are amazing. I have a rod built on an American Tackle "nanophene" blank that has a tip like an ultra light with a 4.5/64" tip  diameter and a a butt diameter of less than 3/8" and it will cast a 3 oz bait just as hard as you want to throw it ... "

   Another statement that might be a little misleading is " .... in fishing rods this can be identified by the opaque, flat black color on the blanks ..."    I don't know what can be identified by the opaque, flat black color on the blanks, but blanks that are commonly termed "graphite" are translucent , and the 15th paragraph down in this document notes that graphene is transparent.    https://www.graphenea.com/pages/graphene

   So no difference there.

  

   It's true that the rod industry is changing. And it's true that graphene may be the biggest "new thing" to hit the market in a long, long time. It's also true that many companies (like Toray) have processes that are proprietary.

   But a buyer needs to have understanding and discernment.  Just because the blank is a flat black doesn't mean anything. By the same token, just because it is translucent might (or might not) mean anything. Don't pick a flat black unpainted rod off the rack and think that because of its appearance that it's exceptionally hi-tech.

   And if it's Toray, you can count on it being high quality. You just can't count on it being a certain material unless it specifically says so.

   Thnx.       jj

  

  

 

I had a 13 Envy Black that was made with a Toray blank and I didn't like the feel of it at all. It was quite sensitive but it had a kind of "brittle" feel to it. It might've also been due in part to the taper. Whatever it was I just didn't care for it and sold the rod.

You can wrap the best material in the world on a crappy mandrel in a sloppy way and not have a good product. Conversely you can make a high performance blank with non Toray material with state of the art processes. There’s a lot that goes into blank manufacturing. I’m into the finished product and its qualities. The path that led to it is interesting but I don’t get hung up on it.