wakina really sorry to hear you have had problems with your daiwa reels. now when i first got mine i spooled them with new power pro line. then when i went to erie fishing i had nightmares with some of my reels. it was so bad i sent the ones i was having problems with to tuna toms at tunasreeltroubles.com. the only problem he found was the braided line was slipping on the spools. just made me tighten the drags down thinking the drags wasnt holding. he put pins in the arbors to tie the line to, which fixed these reels.

so i started all over i now put 200 ft of 17 lb mono backing on my reels then put 450 ft of braid on top of the backing. i havent had any problems with any of my reels since i started using a mono backing for my braid.

from what i,ve heard compairing daiwa reels to the tekotas is like apples and peaches. but the price of the tekotas are just out of reach for most of us fisherman. by buying my reels off ebay i probably got all 14 of my daiwa reels for what 4 of the tekotas would have costed me. you can get the tekota reels on ebay for around 170.00 each up to over 200.00 each. you can get the daiwas new for the sg lca reels around 100.00 each and the adp lc reels for around 70.00 each. but if you watch ebay you can get them for much less.

and as for the okuma convector reels they are also good reels for the price. i would put them in the middle between the sg lca reels and the adp lc reels. but i wouldnt recommend the okuma magda reels to anyone. they will work but not as good as any of the other reels here. if you can afford the tekotas i would recommend them first. if your on my budjet i recommend the sg47lca then the convector in whatever size you need then the accudepth plus 47 lc. right now is a good time to buy off ebay, as you dont have to buy anything, you can shop around for good buys. you have all winter to find the reels you want.

the one thing i will say is if you buy from ebay be sure and check them out very good when you first get them. even if they are new or like new. if they are not as described you can file a dispute if you have to go that far and ebay will get your money back or get the reel replaced. i bought 7 of the sg17lca reels and 7 of the adp17lc reels and i got one sg17lca that if you turned loose of the handle it would turn backwards letting it pay out line. i contacted the seller and he paid to have it fixed. i didnt even have to file a dispute. he told me to get it fixed and he refunded my money to pay for shipping and the repair. but dont wait to long to file a dispute, you only have 45 days from purchase date. but the reel only had one part that had been put back in backwards. it only costed a couple of bucks to get it fixed. the shipping round trip was 16.00. so shipping it costed more than the repair.

and i do recommend you get all the same size reel for whatever you plan to use them for. then put the same amount of line on each reel. if you use braid be sure it has a line tie pin or use a mono backing. something elce i have heard will work is to use tape on the bottom of your spool. but i,ll stick with the mono backing, that way i dont have to use as much braid.

good luck and good fishing to you all.
sherman