Back in the early 90's "Pinnacle" reels & rods hit the scene hard. We sold quite a few of there Deadbolt series reels to customers. (Heck, I even bought one!)
What a piece of crap! At one time we had 22 Deadbolts returned and sitting behind the counter waiting to be sent back to the Pinnacle company, (we had only recieved 30!!)
I had to apologize to all my customers whom I had sold this "lemon" too!
And although we did continue to carry these reels I MADE SURE no one bought another one! (The Rep for Pinnacle would frequent the store and ask, "Hows the product selling?" I would retort," Great. Just Great!".) I must admit, their flipping rod 7'6" was nice.
How bought you guys? Bad experience?
LOL@Pheasant
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one that broke before i even got the line on
Some Wal-mart off brand I just bought while on vacation. I have a Pfluger and i love it.
I tried to cast with it and it splintered and shot a shard into my eye and now im blind in one eye
I bought some Quantum combo baitcaster/rod set long ago. I used it a few times, and then it sat in the garage for years.
I gave it to a co-worker for free and he uses it for just catfishing, but gave me a BPS Enticer spinning reel in return. Good guy, crap combo…
I’m all about Daiwa these days, but my Viento is starting to squeel like a stug pig on the cast, after one spring/summer/fall season of use.
I love the Viento with the Daiwa Tough & Light Rod (TL-661-5RB) and it is dialed in perfect, but I can’t figure out what is causing that buzz and squeel, without voiding the warranty and Dremel polishing some internal gears and parts. Eerrrggh!
I guess it does have a 1 year warranty. I just need to find the Cabelas e-mail or printed receipt.
Zebco 202 Not really a bad rod and reel for the price. Best I’ve ever owned was a Shakespeare open face rod and reel I inherited from my father.
I once bought this Abu Garcia bait-cast that no mater what I did I couldn’t adjust the drag…regardless of what I did it just wouldn’t free-spool for casting??? ended up taking it back to the store and traded up to a nice Shimano
You really get what you pay for in fishing reels.If your talking about spin cast it would be cheap zebco 202.spinning real probably a pflueger,a bait caster a pinnacle.The top line reels is how you pick your best buys you look at there best and try to down grade I fish withe diawa liberto pixy and the steeze but then I also have the shimano curado which for the price is my favorite,most of the good reels will offer a lifetime warranty which is well worth the difference if you keep your equipment for a period of time.Rocky
Without naming a brand, it wasn’t their fault, It was a small reel I had bought from a friend for ice fishing. I’m sure in its day it was good, but it is broken and I cant find the parts to repair it. I suppose the worst reel is one that doesn’t work.
Oh the worst reel I’ve ever owned…has to be the cabelas xss fly reel, for the price i paid for it its rubbish, the reel is too heavy and it doesn’t balance the fly rod, and I’ve tried it on lots of fly rods. The quality for the price isn’t brilliant i really do not recommend them although a good friend of mine has one and loves it, so maybe its just me but i don’t think so. Also the model i bought was the 9-10 for saltwater fly fishing for bone fish and tarpon. Another thing is that no matter what they say it corrodes, and believe me i do take good care of my equipment in fact even when i had stripped it down after fishing and re lubricated it still corroded
I once bought a small PENN spinning reel for an ultra light panfish set up – what a piece of JUNK !!!
Gears binded, drag froze (I had a big largemouth take the fathead instead of a crappie).
At least I got my money back.
About 20 years ago a friend of mine bought a PENN spinning reel for salmon fishing – it lasted ONE fish.
Same thing happened to him as did to me.
Never again.
Now you know why I posted the PENN reels question.
And, no…..the ultra-lite rod wasn’t an UGLY-STIK (LOL)
I think it was an old Mitchell I had bought at a garage sale. It was probably past it useful life when I bought it, so I can’t say it was the reels fault. I kept getting line tangles and was just about to throw it in the lake when some kids asked me for it. I gave it to them and said don’t blame me if it messes up on you.
Penn SS series. Penn stopped making the venerable Z series, the greatest reel of all time made of steel, to market the SS series, a reel made of plastic and a million and one parts.
that new zebco 33 that came out 2 years ago the gears stripped out pulling in that whale off a walleye (it did not even make the 14-inch minimum size limit)
QUANTUM ULTRALIGHT SPINNING COMBO I bought for $19.
No only did the drag fail with the first fish I caught but on my next case teh rod came apart.
any low to medium level reel made by shimano!
I had them before and wore them out so fast I will never buy another one!
lets put it this way i will only buy quantum and daiwa reels from now on. maybe shimano, cause i haven’t tried the curado yet. and only loomis and lamiglas rods too.
Every reel that I spent less than $50 on. But those were mostly used by the kids for lake fishing and were Zebco or cheap knock off’s of a Zebco.
Top end ones at least get repaired and upgraded when a problem happens.
Best now is the Avet reels. What a fish slaying machine. Soothe and dependable for big game and puts up with the saltwater environment.
I like my pretty Calcutta reel but it had jamming problem. Shop just swapped out the insides with a new one out of the box and off I go.
I have heard some bad stories about Ardent Reels which is why they have a 3 year warannty. My experience with Quantum its hard to order parts if one breaks down.