Not only do they look super cool they are extremely well designed rods! After fishing a couple prototype SAR1263 GH rods downrigger fishing for a few months I was sold and put in my order for 6 of them. Having fished custom built downrigger rods to my exact specifications I thought, I was done buying downrigger rods for a long time. Wrong. I would have never guessed I would be replacing them with production rods.
Not only having triple tapered blanks and double locking reel seat, what sold me the most is the construction of the handle/reel seat/foregrip.
Most graphite handle/foregrip rods are constructed using one to three arbors to shim/glue the blank to the handle/foregrip sections. This works, for a while. With the flex of the blank during normal use, and especially trolling rods that are loaded up heavy all the time, the rigidity of the graphite handle/foregrip vs the flexing of the blank underneath, eventually things work loose. i.e.. Handles, real seats, foregrips.
What G.Loomis has done to combat that is amazing. Between the blank and the handle/reel seat and foregrip they inject a proprietary extremely flexible glue that fills the entire void between the components and the blank and have also designed a dovetail type interlocking system between the three for even more durability. In short, give them a try you will not be disappointed.