Penn reel reccommendations

As for parts,most newells,and Penn's ,and others for that matter,don't really wear out. Level wind assemblies can and do. .penn,and newell,made reels with out changes for years and years.That means if you did happen to break something,you can Rob it off something pretty easy.   The Asian,European,reels are upgraded,changed,discontinued so often ,parts can more difficult to obtain.

Newell's are good reels and a step up from Penn's in some regards.  Keep in mind you can find a cruddy Penn and if the side plates are intact disassemble it clean it, even paint the Chrome parts (I like Rustoleum appliance paint, it is tougher than regular rattle can), or spend the money and get those little parts powder coated.  Or fish like it is.  The drags and handle are the 2 things I replace. I hate those 1950's designed tiny handles.  The old fiber board (or what ever those were drags) were replaced by Penn years ago for the HT-100's. Grease them like Alan shows you in his tutorials and you have a good reel for fishing around here.  Also another thing to keep in mind with regards to retrieve ratios, is the size of the spool dictates a lot. a small import reel with a 6:1 ratio may not retrieve any better than an old Penn with 3.3:1 (Surfmaster's and Squidders ratio), But there mini spools don't take as much line per crank as the larger Penn.  There is a way of figuring it out, and on a post going back about 10 years ago I recall I figured a stock Jigmaster retrieved just as much line as what ever the import reel was doing.  I think the difference per crank was with in an inch.  Also another great reel to consider is Abu Garcia in the 5500 and 6500 Size.  Look for the "Made in Sweden"  crest on the side of the reel (the cheaper ones are Made in China (MIC)). On an Abu if it the number ends in a "1" it is a left Hand reel, ie 5500 is RH, 5501 is Lefty.  Great reels, very dependable, a lot of us back when I came on this board were using them.

Thanks guys for all of the generous info.  Hope to meet you on the water some day.
Cheers

If $ is a concern, then the old Penn's work great and can be found for $5-$20 at many garage and estate sales.  One difference I definitely noticed about the newer expensive reels is that they cost more.