2012 Carbonlite

[Tavery5]

Hey guys, had a chance to check out the new Johnny Morris Carbonlite reel today. They got a lot of things right with this reel, but the braking system is different and left me concerned for how well it will operate.



The reel uses a dual braking system with both centrifugal and magnetic brakes that are externally adjustable. The dial on the outside is used to adjust the magnetic braking and the inner ring is used to control the centrifugal brakes.

The first thing I noticed about the adjustments was that the mag brake dial was a little stiff and hard to adjust. The centrifugal brake adjustment felt clunky and cheap.



The magnetic brakes work similar to most externally adjustable brakes, moving the magnets closer to spool for more braking. The centrifugal brakes were designed different than I have seen. The centrifugal brakes are adjusted by moving a stepped brake drum in and out for the brake pins to ride on. The farther the brake drum moves in the tighter the circumference of the brake drum.




It gets worse, the centrifugal brakes make use of a six pin brake system, that has no adjustment. They are all set on, and I may have missed it, but they did not appear to be able to be turned off, so all pins are deployed in all settings.

I only had a few minutes to check this reel out and and do an out of the box review, I will do a much more in depth review of the reel once I have the opportunity to take the reel apart and investigate it's workings a lot closer.