QUANTUM TOUR EDITION PT BAITCAST REEL IS SMOKIN' FAST
by Gary Dollahon
With a name like "Burner,” you know the thing is going to be either blazing hot or super fast. The new Quantum "Burner” model Tour Edition PT baitcast reel is both hot and fast.
Gear ratio is a blistering 7:1 that gobbles up an incredible 28.8 inches of line for every one full turn of the handle. That’s almost 3 inches more line per turn than achieved with the high-speed 6.3:1 reels so popular today. That’s a foot more of line in just four turns.
Speed is important to serious bass anglers, and as a result, Tour Edition Burners are the hottest selling baitcasters on the market. Here’s why the new reels are so special.
Quantum engineers had the luxury of building the Tour Edition reels from scratch … they didn’t have to work within the confines of a previous design. So they got to do everything exactly as they wanted, including designing a new gearbox, and the gears for it. The new gearbox gives Quantum reels a distinctive new look. It also allowed the engineers to resolve the power issue of going to the ultra-high speed. Quantum product specialist Chris Strickland explains.
"Our top pros, including Kevin VanDam, Gary Klein, Gerald Swindle, Shaw Grigsby, Dean Rojas, and Tommy Biffle, came to a product review meeting a while back begging for a super fast baitcast reel,” Strickland said. "Building a faster reel wasn’t the problem, but building one that didn’t lose its torque, its cranking power, was. The challenge was how to put a bigger high-speed gear into a compact, low profile reel like we make here at Quantum. But our engineers said they could do it, if we’d let them start with a blank piece of paper … we gave them the green light.”
"The Tour Edition PT baitcast reel is the result of the effort. It does have the distinctive new look with the extended gear box, but it’s still a sleek, low profile baitcaster that today’s serious anglers demand,” he said.
Another contributing factor to the accomplishment is Quantum’s proprietary PT gears. PT gears feature the hardest gear material in the industry for lifelong durability. They simply don’t "strip.”
So why did the pros ask for a faster reel? Dean Rojas says the Burner’s speed is critical for his favorite "frog” bait. "When a fish hits my frog, he’s turned and headed down to cover in a flash,” Rojas explained, "and I’ve got to retrieve line and turn his head, fast.” "With this new Tour Edition PT, I’m in total control of my bait, line, and the fish, just as soon as I start to turn the handle. It makes an awesome difference for me in this fishing technique.”
To Tommy Biffle, the Tour Edition Burners model is all about fishing time. "Flipping and pitching are about covering every piece of structure you can in a day’s fishing,” Biffle began. "The more targets I hit, the more fish I catch. It’s that simple. With the 7:1 gear ratio, I can react quicker to a strike and get the fish turned. If I don’t get bit, I can have the bait back and on its way again in a split second. For me, this reel means I can make more bait presentations in a day’s fishing.
