horse hockey

 

Abu Garcia Svangsta stopped making Ambassadeur in Sweden in 2024. 

They moved production to Poland.  

 

@WRB-2.0

Ambassadeur S is made in China and shouldn't be compared with Svangsta reels.  They were made for the US-curiosity market.  

Yup. I’ve seen the reels still stamped made in Sweden in the past year.. 

The new Zenon reels are actually pretty decent, even with a Doyo tag, but they're way overpriced. 

I can only report what I know and Abu started having parts made off shore around 2000 and legacy parts became very difficult to find. I started making Iovino parts for his reels about that time Don claimed Abu was assembling a few round reels but production was no longer in Sweden.

Tom

2 hours ago, newapti5 said:

The new Zenon reels are actually pretty decent, even with a Doyo tag, but they're way overpriced. 

Ahhhh my old name on here "Abu Is Overpriced" is finally showing up. That is the reason why i don't believe Abu can compete with the other two. Not only are their products inferior, but cost as much, and in certain cases even more expensive. And then, don't preserve their value in the used market whatsoever. Its a good brand if they were at least 35% less expensive in each tier of reels. Otherwise i have no chosen an Abu over the other two, and i don't see this ever happening, no matter the reel. Maybe a Made In Sweden/Poland magnesium low profile reel with a slick new frame, and a good paintjob, but that's just not happening, like ever.

On 11/24/2025 at 7:55 PM, bulldog1935 said:

Abu Garcia Svangsta stopped making Ambassadeur in Sweden in 2024. 

TW still has stock of several M.I.S. models.

 

Abu Garcia Ambassadeur C4 6600 Casting Reels - Tackle Warehouse

 

Abu Garcia Ambassadeur C4 5600 Casting Reels - Tackle Warehouse

 

Abu Garcia Ambassadeur C3 6500 Casting Reels - Tackle Warehouse

 

Abu Garcia Ambassadeur C3 5500 Casting Reels - Tackle Warehouse

 

On 11/21/2025 at 5:48 PM, Joedodge said:

Abu has just never been a reel on my radar. Some of them have looked nice and got great reviews. But not one have I really ever felt the need to purchase. 

I use the 30$ Walmart reels - black max - they’re nice for the money - I use them for beating the bank and pair them with a 30$ Walmart rod!  😆

31 minutes ago, Pat Brown said:

I use the 30$ Walmart reels - black max - they’re nice for the money - I use them for beating the bank and pair them with a 30$ Walmart rod!  😆

That makes sense. I should put a combo like that together 

I picked up a Zenon X recently. It's a decent reel overall and good build quality with a good drag system. It's also very lightweight at 5.5oz which is what drew me to it to begin with and the gear ratio is 6.8 which is one of my favorite ratios. It also has that made in Sweden stamp on it but I honestly don't care where it's made as long as it works. For downsides the brakes just seem to be a mag / centrifugal combo similar to what you would get in previous gen Lew's reels in the $150 to $200 range. The brakes aren't really a dealbreaker for me though and work fine for me as I don't need more than that anyway for this setup.

 

Overall I agree it seems a bit overpriced and I'd expect a bit more for the brakes these days at that price, but as an example it's on Copperstate right now and with the sale going the price gets down to $262 which seems reasonable for this reel. I was able to get it for just about the same a few weeks ago so it's not all that hard to find on sale somewhere.  I also don't see any similarly sized reels from Shimano, Daiwa or Lew's with a similar line cap that get down to this weight other than the HyperMag or Tournament Lite from Lew's but there are very limited options available with those. The Lew's Tourney Pro weighs a little more but I also have one of those and the brakes on that one also feel very similar to the ones in the Zenon X to me. On a side note I still also really like the Lew's Tourney Pro.

 

The only other one that I found in that weight range is the Steez SV TW. Slightly lower line cap and 5.6oz but not exactly apples to apples at that point as it's clearly in a different league than the Zenon X.

 

I'm personally happy with this reel and got it for it's weight to pair up on a very light rod (Xtasy 753). My other casting reels are all Daiwa or Lew's or Shimano as those have been the best options I've found in the price range I usually like to stick with for casting reels these days. For moving bait reels where the lures are usually heavy / dense enough that I don't care about a fancy brake system my favorite option by far is the Tatula 100 or 150. For other setups I look at a few different factors and pick accordingly and at this point there's still a spot for Abu in my lineup, but agree they could look at stepping things up a bit. In a perfect world I would have paired the rod up with the Steez, but wanted to keep the overall price down.

9 hours ago, newapti5 said:

The new Zenon reels are actually pretty decent, even with a Doyo tag, but they're way overpriced. 

What's really interesting about the Zenon lineup is they are not priced to the moon in Japan, even if you aren't taking the exchange rate into account.  For instance, the Zenon BF7 in Japan retails for 35,800 JPY, here the LTX-BFS, which is the USM equivalent runs $550, or about 85,900 JPY at the current exchange rate.  Even if the exchange rate were much more in favor of the yen, it would still be considerably cheaper to buy the JDM model.  Pure Fishing could lower the price considerably on many of their Doyo made reels, but to give the impression that the Zenon is their flagship lineup, they price it accordingly.

PureFishingJP led the way in package BFS reels in JDM.  On the demo video for my favorite shore BF rod, Mr. Yamaga is fishing Revo Elite 7-L (he always saves the good fish for the end)

 

Something else worthy of mention, Pure Fishing JP operates independent of Pure Fishing USA.  They are both under the same umbrella company, but PFJP is in full control of what they offer the Japanese market.  They are what arose from the ashes of Olympic, the distributor of Abu in Japan up until 2000 when they went bankrupt.  Pure Fishing bought the remaining Olympic assets and formed PFJP.  Up until Sycamore Partners bought Pure Fishing in 2018, PFJP still operated like they did under Olympic.  After the acquisition, Sycamore Partners cancelled all business partnerships for Abu Garcia.  This is why Svangsta has closed, why we've only gotten C3/C4 rehashes, and why Abu no longer produces parts for reels made prior to 1997.  Before then, Abu was still making parts for the Ambassadeur going all the way back to 1954.  Some of those reels in Abu's history came with a lifetime warranty that needed to be fulfilled.  Plus they supplied parts to guys like Jerry Foran and Simon Shimomura to create models of their own for sale.

The Gen3 Revo S and Revo STX are the most recent offerings from them that I still have and use. I still like their feel, they are smooth and cast well.

 

If I remember correctly, they started switching around braking setups between the models after that and I just stopped following them. I liked the centrifugal brakes Revo S with the 6spd for casting moving baits. The STX had the dual braking that was in a nice light frame. 7spd reel in a 6.4oz frame worked nice for a lot of things!!

 

I have checked out a couple of their newer models with the asymmetric bodies, but just didn't get a good enough feeling to pull the trigger.