I would appreciate opinions by users/builders of Gatti Rods.

I have a very good friend I am thinking of building a rod for. He appreciates fine, high quality gear and things that are less common. I think he might really enjoy a Gatti. I recently got started in building rods and this would be a great excuse to start another.

How do they stack up against rods like I am more familiar with, like Sage, Winston, etc.?

What do you like and dislike about them?

Based on what I've read on their web site they seem like excellent rods, but that's based on what they say and their "philosophy". I would like to hear from actual users.

Thanks!

Yep just finished building a F865B, great value for money, cannot go wrong with the Gatti quality, casts 60'+ no problems. BTW I have no affiliation with ANY manufacturer.

Regards

Tong

I didn´t like their claim that the blanks were without any spine. I have built one rod on a Gatti blank and examined some rods which all had...a spine.
I have casted three Gatti rods, and well, ....why not bad, or even good, I find more
value in the blanks from CTS in NZ. At the moment I am building two rods for a client
on CTS Affinity One blanks. I have test casted the lighter of them a 7.5´ #5 ,3-piece one.
I find it at least as good as a Sage Z-Axis IMHO. I like the later as well. But to me this is a small sensation as the CTS blank is about one third for me to buy here in Sweden. It may depend on that CTS has a factory direct deal/offer were you can have 40% discount when buying in excess of a certain amount.

If this sounds like an ad for CTS it isn´t. I have no economical interest in this company and as I was responsible for a big group-buy in excess of $ 3000 last year, I was somewhat frustrated at the a) often slow respons to my mail b ) delivery took much longer than stated in the price list. Still we eventually got what we had paid for and none of the blanks had significant faults to them. So we may order one more time and hope for a faster delivery this time.

BTW I own a CTS Affinity One Double Handed rod 13´#9-10 which I like.

I like to have a personal rod thus I wrapped it using two or four threads simultaniously the result can
seen here http://www.edgeforum.com/index.php/topic,54326.240.html please scroll down to the middle of the page and pictures are clickable. In swedish but the pictures speak I hope.
Even some pictures here; http://www.edgeforum.com/index.php/topic,54326.255.html

Regards
Håkan

Gatti's are a great rod. Get ahold of Rovercat (Brian) at this site- http://www.rodbuildingforum.com/index.php?showforum=19
He has Gatti USA.
FWIW, I've never heard the claim about Gatti's being without a spine. Most rodbuilders don't even bother about spining a rod anymore.

Another great rod to build would be from a Burkheimer blank.

John Gotti builds blanks? They must swear a lot and be made with a lot of glittering fake diamonds.

GATTI- not GOTTI. Same country, different professions.

The Gatti blanks that I have seen have varied in quality. Unless they have upgraded their quality control recently, I would ask Brian to hand select your blank.

I've heard high praise for his rods and less than high praise.
I finally got to cast one last summer and was underwhelmed. Don't get me wrong, it was an okay rod but it didn't knock my socks off in any way, shape or form. Maybe they have different series and the one I cast wasn't their best. I dunno.
One thing I do know is that from everything I've heard and read is that their warranty service is horrible when compared to the old reliables.

I have owned two GATTIs, one TA 5wt and one PA 6wt. Sold them both. They both were fun rods to see just how much line one could throw, but didn't fish very well at all. Tip sections are way too stiff for trout fishing IMHO. Perhaps a 6 or 7wt built with salt safe components would be a good schoolie bass rod?

rich