I've never broken a "cheap" rod - they're generally built from lower modulus graphite, or a graphite/glass blend, which withstands impacts from flies, rocks, and boat gunnels quite a bit better than the higher modulus composites the fancier rods are made of. Pretty simple, the lighter, tighter, higher modulus rods are more brittle. Never broken my $100 or $150 rods either. If a guy has a crapload of cash to blow - then go for it and get the expensive gear to begin with. But most fisherman aren't in the catagory, and frankly you come off with the attitude that anything less than a $200 rod is a piece of crap that won't work. Hilarious and flat out wrong. The only appreciable difference a new caster will notice between a "cheap" rod and the high dollar gear will be the weight of the rod itself, and they might visually notice cosmetic differences. Put a $500 Sage in a beginners hands, and a $20 Eagle Claw, and they're still going to have timing issues, tailing loops, and the bugs that plague new casters. They probably won't break the $20 Eagle Claw as quickly when they smack the ground, a bush, or a tree with the tip as they would that Sage though. That warranty will be great when the guy is waiting for 2 weeks to get his rod back. If he breaks the cheap rod, he can send it off to get fixed, or go buy another one for less cash and get back on the water and get better - and when he gets better, he'll appreciate the casting ability of the higher end rods a lot more. And I'll turn your statement around, flyrekker, it's not the lower end rods that NEED that lifetime warranty - it's the high dollar rods. They wouldn't sell nearly the same number if there wasn't a warranty - because as soon as someone had to pay another $500 to replace a broken rod, they'd tell that company to **** off and rant to everyone they knew about how crap that company is. So they give you a "lifetime warranty" (ask a lot of owners of older G. Loomis rods made before Shimano took over about that, or even owners of rods that simply had production dropped.) and you wind up paying half the price of a new rod to get your rod fixed or replaced. You break that $500 rod, and it quite possibly turns into a $750 rod that is less valuable than when you first purchased it. Break it again and it's a $900 $500 rod. Kind of a sweet deal there for the rod maker.
My late brother in law fished nothing but G. Loomis rods - to him anything less was complete crap. His rods are nice rods - but I can't count how many times he'd snapped a rod tip because he'd hit it with a fly, smacked a tree tip, or over-pressured a rod. He had two broken Loomis rods in the back of his truck when my father in law and I cleaned it out. They're great tools - nice, light weight, and they cast great. They're very fragile though - and not terribly well suited to the abuses a beginner is going to dish at them. Loomis will tell you you need one of their rods to start out with, because they're in the business of selling rods. Same with Echo, Sage, TFO and on and on. To them, and their fanboys, they invented fly casting and fly rods - anything less expensive is complete junk, and anything more expensive is a waste. You need their brand (and their hats, stickers, hoodies, fly boxes, bumper stickers, engraved forceps and nippers). And some guys eat it all up - guys who are so brand-blinded that they can't see "cheap" rods as useful tools, or realize that some of those "cheap" rods actually are light weight, good quality gear.
And while the guy at the fly shop is in business to make money - they're not all vultures, and will be a wealth of knowledge for beginners. I'll use Don Nelson as a great example - Don will freely share info with you, give you casting tips, and let you cast any of his rods out behind the store. He will also make you a good deal with bundled packages if you buy from him. He surely can be your friend in the fly tackle industry - if you want him to be. I doubt, though, that if you go into his shop with the express intention of not buying anything - but you want to try a bunch of rods out so you can decide which one to get on eBay - he's going to be a lot less enthused about dealing with you, or sharing knowledge with you. Can't get that kind of service from the internet. And you don't have to pay shipping charges.
I'm simply trying to save folks some hard earned cash when they're just starting out - because if they don't like it and have to unload the rods - they're not going to screw themselves nearly as hard going with decent, cheap gear than they will blowing their wad on the spendy gear. Three months down the road if they are head over heels in love with fly fishing is a fine time to get the more expensive stuff, if they want it. They're out less cash that way than if they blow $300 on a rod, reel, and line and hate fly fishing - only to sell the thing for $150 on craigslist after three months or a year. And that cheap rod can be passed down to a kid, a friend, or some stranger who wants to start fly fishing. There's plenty of time to become a gear queen once you figure out how to throw a roll cast more than 20 feet, or you stop throwing tailing loops with every cast.
