Old Silver: Precision 500

The precision series consisted of six sizes 501 - 506, was manufactured in Japan from 1975 to at least 1978 and covered almost the entire area of freshwater fishing. Until the late 1970s, it was very popular with European fishermen due to the quality of the models at a relatively low price.

The first role of this series ran into me at the Karstadt Sporthaus in 1980, for a fabulous 34 marks, which I couldn't leave as a student. At that time, nobody wanted to buy these out-of-date rolls with a cup rotor. When I opened the housing, however, I was deeply surprised - a worm gear steel on steel! The combination brass / steel or brass / brass (DAM, ABU) run slightly softer, but are not as durable.
The ratios offered are only mediocre 1: 4.8 - 1: 3.5, the super-soft running compensates for that.
Unfortunately, the 502 only had plastic spools. The 503 also came with an additional spool made of plastic, but with a large core for the finest lines. The series originally started around 1977 without a push-button spool, the 505 and 506 never got it. The crank is supported on one side in a long, pressed-in sintered bush, the only ball bearing is huge and sits in the rotor. The structure is simple but mechanically extremely stable.
In addition, the roles can be folded wonderfully compact, something like that is rarely found later.
One of the few disadvantages - as was common at the time, the backstop was attached to the crank gear and not to the circulation cap as later. Therefore, if the reverse is blocked, the braking force is also transmitted across the entire transmission.

The 500 series of precision was significantly simplified compared to the previous series with the models 8100/8300/8600/8700. These roles had never been offered in Europe and were very different from model to model. The 8300, 8600 and 8600 were mounted on both sides of the crankshaft, the last two models had three ball bearings at the time. The 8100 had two ball bearings but only one-sided crankshaft bearings.
The cord hinge did not consist of bent and chrome-plated sheet metal as later, but of black-colored die-cast aluminum, the folding mechanism of the crank had a sleeve, not the later left-hand thread. Overall, the precision series was the flagship of Daiwa until the appearance of the "skirted" roles.
In order to be able to sell the Precision series in Europe as well, the described drawbacks were made; these were to be missed because the core virtues remained, especially since the price fluctuated between DM 47.50 and 69.50 (Balzer 1978). This was often the fate of the last Mohicans in a role series (freely based on Balichev.com) .

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