Thanks for the info Chris and Lief, you guys are right about the drags being dry. I talked to Brian on the phone last night and he pointed it out too. So I tried drying off the newell drags and putting them back in. They were much better but not great. So I said forget it and put back the old Penn drags inside of the newell 5:1 gears. This worked great. Smooth as it used to be with the high speed retrieve. Duh Rob...