I'd buy the Whites tall man lower carbon fiber rod. It's cheaper at $10 than Minelab's lower fiberglass rod and less weight. I've been swinging around the 15x12 on that lower Whites rod with no issues for months. The only problem is you'll need to use four rubber washers to make up for the wider gap on the Minelab coils so they snug up to the rod. Go up to Home Depot and look into the faucet section. They have various rubber or silicon washers that will match up, though you may need to drill out the center of the washer to accept the coil mount bolt. The normal Whites carbon fiber lower rod is the same one as the tall man rod, it's just that the Tall Man lower rod is longer. Just cut it down to the wanted length and drill out your two snap pin poles. I made a custom upper lighter shaft for my GT and since the Tall Man rod is longer I kept that at original length and just shorted my lighter upper aluminum shaft I used to replace the stock heavier upper shaft. Since carbon is lighter than aluminum I lost more weight by cutting the custom upper shaft shorter so that the Whites tall man lower rod makes up more than half of my shaft's length now. Real easy to do. While I was at it I used a bike end bar for a new more comfortable/lighter grip and stuck a rubber bike grip on it. Also mounted a remote pinpoint switch inside that end bar hanging down like the PP trigger on a Whites. Then mounted my meter on top of the grip using a copper pipe hangar from home depot. Running a lipo in my GT, replaced the coil cover with spray on bed liner (lighter), and also replaced the half pound stock GT arm cup with the Whites "heavy duty" one for $10 from Whites. Total weight savings even using the 15x12 coil is well over a pound less weight than the stock GT using the 10" Tornado. I'd say my GT is probably lighter than my Whites now and never gives me an issue with fatigue. You can see these mods in the Sovereign GT mods thread in this forum.
