Until recently, fiber amplifiers were limited to relatively low peak power levels. Now, rod fibers bridge and overlaps the fiber world with the DPSS crystalline rod based world without the need for in-house fiber handling skills. The non-coilable rod waveguides represent the ultimate performance with a range of unique features: MW peak power handling No thermal lensing High single pass gain Guidance of signal and pump High beam quality Excellent beam pointing Free space coupling Polarization maintaining High efficiency (~ 70%) High pump acceptance angle (NA > 0.6) Polarization independent pump absorption The rod fibers are typically used within three main applications for pulsed laser systems: Output amplifier stage in fiber amplifier chains Intracavity Q-switched configuration Replacing Nd:YAG, Nd:YLF and Nd:YVO4 laser crystals