Aldila Ascent Driver Shaft Review

Leave a reply

Aldila Ascent Driver Shaft Review

By Russ Ryden, Fit2Score, A Dallas Fort Worth Club Fitter & Club Maker
The Highlands Performance Golf Center, Carrollton Texas 
Golf Digest Certified America’s 100 Best Club Fitter

The 2021 Aldila Ascent is a reminder that Mitsubishi Chemical purchased Aldila several years ago. The design is reminiscent of several very successful Mitsubishi models in the past. Albeit with the latest prepreg and fibers.

To continue reading this section of the review, you must be registered at a higher level membership.
Russ

Dynamic Gold AMT – Tour Issue – Golf Shaft Review

3 Replies

Dynamic Gold AMT Iron Shafts

By Russ Ryden and Mark Maness

By Russ Ryden, Fit2Score, A Dallas Fort Worth Club Fitter & Club Maker
The Golf Center at the Highlands, Carrollton Texas

DGAMT_Image

AMT stands for Ascending Mass Technology. It is not a new concept. Ping has had ascending weight shafts for many years. Nippon 999’s were ascending. Aerotech Players Spec were ascending. If you are not a club maker you probably have not been exposed to the concept. Briefly, there are primarily two kinds of shafts; constant weight tapers and parallel’s. Constant weight tapers are made to length in the factory and the shafts in the set are all the same weight even though they are different lengths. Parallels are made to one length in the factory. The club maker cuts them to the length needed for the club he is building. As they are cut shorter they weigh less. The shafts in a set are lighter in the short irons than in the long irons.  I wrote an article about this some years ago in the technical stuff section of this site; Constant Weight vs Parallel Iron Shafts.

Iron heads get heavier as the the numbers get higher. The 4 iron head is heavier than the 3 iron, the 5 iron is heavier than the 4 iron and so on down to the gap wedge. In sets made of parallel shafts, the shafts get lighter while the head gets heavier. In sets made from constant weight shafts, the shafts are the same weight while the heads get heavier. In ASCENDING WEIGHT sets, the shafts get heavier as the heads get heavier. This has always been an attraction the club builders that create MOI, Moment of Inertia, matched sets.

The technical discussion, measurements and testing results are available only to registered readers

This is a great step forward in iron shaft technology. Keep it coming, True Temper, the club building community has waited a long time for a set of iron shafts like this!

Mitsubishi KuroKage XM Driver Shaft Review

7 Replies

Mitsubishi KuroKage XM Driver

By Russ Ryden, Fit2Score, A Dallas Fort Worth Club Fitter & Club Maker
The Golf Center at the Highlands, Carrollton Texas

KKXM_Image
Some shafts are simply too good to change. The Mitsubishi KuroKage Proto TiNi is one such shaft. The new KuroKage XM is the KuroKage Proto with new graphics and a wider range of weights. It is promoted as a mid launch – mid spin shaft. I view launch and spin as a propensity not an absolute. Your angle of attack, the club head loft,  where you strike and how the shaft, interacting with your loading and release, deliver the head are all part of the launch and spin equation. The XM, in the right hands, is not what I would define as mid launch / mid spin. But, shaft companies have to fill in those words for the golfing public.

The Mitsubishi website has always presented shaft EI graphics alongside their verbal descriptions. If you spend years looking at those charts and testing them on a wide range of golfers they being to have meaning. I view the difference between the KuroKage XM and the KuroKage XT as more feel related than launch. The XT has a stiffness bump low mid. That bump does contribute to a lower launch, but more important, gives a better sense of tip stability to a hard swinging late release golfer.

The technical discussion, measurements and testing results are available only to registered readers

To continue reading this section of the review, you must be registered at a higher level membership.
Russ

Project X HZDRUS Yellow Golf Shaft Review

6 Replies

Project X HZRDUS Yellow Driver Shaft

By Russ Ryden, Fit2Score, A Dallas Fort Worth Club Fitter & Club Maker
The Golf Center at the Highlands, Carrollton Texas

HZDRUS Yellow Image
The Project X HZRDUS Yellow is the third driver shaft in the Hand Crafted family from True Temper. It has a notably soft midsection. This is much like the first in the series, the Project X Loading Zone reviewed earlier. The bend profile is much like the profiles of the 70 gram versions of the Project X Loading Zone model. The soft zones of those shafts moved with weight and flex. I have fit a number of players into the 50 and 60 gram versions of the Loading Zone. Therefore, another shaft with that design grabbed my attention.

I had a chance just recently to test it during a fitting with a single digit handicap player that showed up with a 6 year old driver and a 103 mph golf swing. Working with the Yellow HZRDUS and a TaylorMade M1 we added 2 mph to his swing speed, 3 mph to his ball speed, dropped his spin 800 rpm all of which added 17 yards to his drives. His playing buddies are in for a surprise.

To continue reading this section of the review, you must be registered at a higher level membership.
Russ

Project X HZRDUS Black Driver Shaft Review

3 Replies

Project X HZRDUS Black Driver Shaft

By Russ Ryden, Fit2Score, A Dallas Fort Worth Club Fitter & Club Maker
The Golf Center at the Highlands, Carrollton Texas

HZDRUS Black Image

The Project X brand is a flagship in the golf shaft business. The brand started as an unstepped steel shaft and has morphed into carbon fiber driver and hybrid shafts. This shaft, like the Project X loading zone that came before it is hand made in the US under tight quality control processes.

The product information from True Temper tells us the shaft has a firmer midsection than the Loading Zone model. And indeed it does, lets look at the numbers:

To continue reading this section of the review, you must be registered at a higher level membership.
Russ

Aldila 2KVX NV Golf Shaft Review

2 Replies

Aldila 2KVX NV Driver Shaft

By Russ Ryden, Fit2Score, A Dallas Fort Worth Club Fitter & Club Maker
The Golf Center at the Highlands, Carrollton Texas

2016NV2KXVImage

A new generation of carbon fibers, that boost the strength of the material used in the construction of golf shafts are boosting strength while reducing the weight. Applying these new material to classic designs is changing the game. Advances in head design are helping us hit the ball further, advances in shaft design are keeping those longer balls in the fairway. The Aldila 2KVX NV is the third iteration of a classic design. Who can forget the original lime green Aldila NV. Of course, it was introduce such a long time ago many younger golfers have never seen it. I looked in the 2016 GolfWorks catalog and it is still there. The official second generation design, the RIP NV was reviewed here, a few years ago. When you have a design that works, and new materials, the old designs get updated.

Aldila was one of the first shaft companies to use thinner layers of material in shaft design. It was called MLT, Micro Laminate Technology, and I believe the original NV was the first shaft to use it. We are now in an time when a lot of new high density, high strength materials are being used in golf shafts. The new fibers are thinner with the same strength. The prepreg, the sheets a shaft is made from, have more fiber and less resin. This denser material is redefining how a golf shaft can be made. A new dimension of what started as MLT is evolving. What we are seeing is torque numbers going slightly higher to restore a conventional feel to high density shafts. As you compare the torque numbers of the 2KVX NV to older designs and see larger torque numbers, do not be alarmed. It is happening everywhere high density materials are used.

The technical discussion, measurements and testing results are available only to registered readers

- - -