The Search For One... Lamiglas Certified Pro

Total Score: 7.33 - GOOD

Introduction: Lamiglas, one of the few remaining manufacturers that still offer both built rods and rod blanks to the consumer, is a company that has walked the fine line of being relatively conservative while still offering enough new product to keep anglers interested. Witness the contemporary stylings of their value driven Excel and more progressive XMG lines and of course, let us not forget the bright yellow stylings of the former Skeet Reese signature series rods. Still, for years the bread and butter bass rods for Lamiglas has been their coveted Certified Pro sticks – a series of rods with traditional stylings together with Fuji components. The most popular stick in this lineup? Arguably their entry to our 2010 Search For One… introducing our review of the Lamiglas Certified Pro XFT764.

Impressions: The XFT764 comes in a very old school, telescopic blank. I found this surprising given the propensity of one piece bass sticks in the market today up to eight feet in length. This rod also features a full rear grip and foregrip of cork, a Fuji ECS reel seat, and Fuji stainless steel framed Alconite guides. Oddly enough, missing on this rod is a hook keeper. This is a very traditional, no nonsense, non-flashy stick with one very appealing characteristic – a lively tip.

Introducing the Lamiglas Certified Pro XFT764.

Lab Tests: Naturally, first stop for our XFT764 was the lab where we introduced it to our RoD WRACK and collected data points on the rod’s deflection characteristics enroute to charting it against our 2010 TSFO baseline. Interestingly enough, while the XFT764’s ratings are roughly a full power higher than that of our TSFO baseline stick, the MBR783C GLX2000, their deflection curves are very similar. In fact, the XFT764 deflects even more than the GLX2000 at loads approaching twenty ounces and more. A lot of this probably has to do with to the fact the XFT764 is a full foot longer than the GLX2000 providing more length for the rod to bend through while under load.

Also as expected, because the XFT764 is a full foot longer than the MBR783C GLX2000, it did not fare too well in comparisons of weight, balance point, and balancing torque. In fact, the XFT764 did not fare well in any of these categories against the overall average of all 26 rods in our Search for One campaign either.

Fig 1: This chart illustrates the deflection characteristics of Lamiglas's XFT764 as compared to that of our 2010 TSFO baseline rod, an MBR783C GLX2000. Note that the two rods behave very similarly until about 20 ounces of load is applied at which point the XFT764 (yellow) deflects just a tad more than the GLX2000 (blue).