TrueTemper Elevate ETS Golf Shaft Review

Leave a reply

TrueTemper ELEVATE ETS Iron 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 TrueTemper ELEVATE ETS is available in both taper tip and parallel designs. the Elevate ETS 85 and 95 are .370 parallel tip designs. The Elevate ETS 115 is a constant weight taper tip DYNAMIC design offered in R, S and X flex.

Here is what TrueTemper tells us about the ELEVATE ETS.

If you are not familiar with what I refer to as a DYANAMIC design it is explained with this illustration. Dynamic design constant weight taper tip iron sets are a shaft design archetype almost exclusively produced by TrueTemper. The EI profiles change with flex designation. This is discussed in the review of the Dynamic Gold. In many other taper iron sets stiffness is a byproduct of weight, as weight increases, stiffness increases while the EI profiles remain the same. The TrueTemper Dynamic archetype holds weight nearly the same from flex to flex while changing the EI profile. The Elevate ETS R, weighting 115 grams has a longer tip section promoting a higher launch. The Elevate ETS S weighs 116 grams and has a shorter tip section promoting a mid launch. The Elevate ETS X weighs 117 grams and has the shortest tip section promoting the lowest launch of the group. As you look at this illustration you can see how the tip to first step length differences creates three different bend profiles.

This is a vital understanding if you are considering the ELEVATE ETS taper shafts. You have the ability to pick a launch propensity while holding weight constant. Now, lets look at how these three profiles compare in overall stiffness and chart the profiles of the parallel designs.

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

Project X Loading Zone Golf Shaft Review

6 Replies

Project X Loading Zone Driver Shafts

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

PXLZ_ImagesHandCrafted
The Project X LZ, or loading zone shaft features a linear soft zone in the middle of the shaft which is visibly reinforced with bias wraps to maintain torsional stability. This 2014 composite driver shaft from True Temper, released under the Project X brand, is made in limited numbers in the USA facility in San Diego California. I am told only 60 or 70 can be made in any given day with current staffing.

This is an interesting option now being offered by a few companies. The general golfing public has access to the shafts that are made in the tour department for the tour players. Most graphite shafts are hand rolled. As such, the care taken by the person putting the shaft together is reflected in the quality and consistency of the finished shaft. Almost every company has some highly skilled wrappers that make their prototypes. And very often, when these people are not making protos, they are making the shafts that go to the professional tour vans. These shafts are not necessarily better than the shafts made in the volume production shops, but they are free of the shaft to shaft inconsistencies found in the factory produced product. And I have seen some inconsistencies that are hard to believe from the high volume, low cost foundries, but that is another story.

The concept of the Load Zone was to create a soft midsection in the shaft. Mid soft shafts are among the most popular shaft in my fitting experience. No shaft company likes to hear a section of their shafts being discussed as soft. If you make the tip stiff and the butt stiff, the mid is soft in relation to those other two zones. In the Project X Loading Zone shaft, the soft mid section is reinforced by a material called flex lock. That is graphite fiber oriented on an angle from the length of the shaft, commonly refereed to as bias or hoop plies. This stabilizes the torque in this zone. A full discussion of the design is shown in the videoed discussion I had with Don Brown, the True Temper graphite shaft product development manager.

The technical discussion and measurements are available only to registered readers

This is an interview shot at the 2015 PGA merchandise show in Orlando. Don Brown is the Graphite Shaft Product Development Manger for True Temper Sports. The discussion of the Loading Zone Shafts gets technical. Many readers of this site tell me they do not understand some of the graphics and discussions in my reviews. What you see in this video is a discussion using the terms you see on this shaft review site. Enjoy!

The technical discussion and measurements are available only to registered readers

Whenever someone asks me what is the best shaft, the answer is always the same, ‘the one that fits your swing.’ This one fits the swing change I am working on. The other shaft fit the swing I had. So I will leave you with this thought. There is a synergy between your gear and your swing. If your swing is grooved on a particular shaft loading pattern, that shaft may not best fit a swing change you are trying to make. In fact, it may impede you from being successful with a new motion pattern.

Graphite Design Tour AD M9003 Golf Shaft Review

4 Replies

Graphite Design Tour AD M9003 Driver Shaft

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

GDADG9003_Image

The Graphite Design Tour AD M9003 released in mid 2015. It is an unusual addition in that it is only available in 4 models, 60 and 70 S and X. With a $550 MSRP, this is not a shaft for any but the strongest fastest golfers. Graphite design is not recommending it for anyone south of a 105 mph driver swing. That excludes me. It is made with high modulus 55 ton, Nanoalloy prepreg from Toray. Translation, the material in this shaft is as good as it gets.
Radial consistency is 98.9% with a 0.2% standard deviation. Like all Graphite Design Tour AD shafts, it is round and will play exactly the same in any orientation.

The closest match to this shaft from Graphite Design is the Tour AD BB, a shaft that was released around 2011. The Tour AD BB is one of Graphite Design’s popular shafts on the professional tours and gets a lot of play on the LPGA. The profiles are similar until we get to the tip.

The technical discussion and measurements are available only to registered readers

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

Grafalloy Prolaunch SuperCharged Golf Shaft Review

6 Replies

Grafalloy Prolaunch Supercharged Drive Shafts

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

GrafalloyBlueRedSuperImages

The Grafalloy Prolaunch Blue and Red Supercharged drive shafts are 2015 additions to the ProLaunch product line. They are $60 shafts with radial quality of 98.3% with a standard deviation of 0.6%. If you have not been reading this site and looking the radial quality numbers I will translate this for you, one word, impressive. Shaft to shaft consistency of the review sample profiles was equally impressive. I did not think a $60 shaft would get my attention. I was wrong.

If the $300 to $500 high end works of shaft art technology are not in your budget, try the Grafalloy Prolaunch Supercharged in your driver. You are going to give up some hoop stiffness and might experience some ovalizing. If that is a problem you can always get a similar design in the Project X LZ for around $350. The SuperCharged Prolaunch has a similar design to the handcrafted Project X LZ shaft, an active midsection. Does this design work for you? If you are not close to a fitter that can let you test the Project X LZ you can try a low cost test on your own with the ProLaunch Supercharged shafts.

The Blue is a higher launch design, the Red a lower launch.  To my eyes they are much the same profile. The Red is heavier and stiffer. The bend point is higher. Those two properties are going to lower launch. This is not really complicated stuff to understand. Stiffer is lower for any particular golfer. Find the stiffness you feel you can load. Then, going a little softer or stiffer will move the launch up or down.
ProLaunchSCEiGjTb

Look at the balance in this chart. These shaft are counterweighted to restore club balance when using the current generation of heavy driver heads. This is not seen at this price point.

This profile, a softer active midsection is gaining traction with the shaft companies. With this set of profiles, this particular pattern got my attention. Soft midsections are among the most popular shafts in the business. Exaggerated soft is a design I am beginning to see from a lot of shaft companies. it looks like one needs to go in my bag.

Grafalloy ProLaunch Golf Shaft Review

Leave a reply

Grafalloy ProLaunch Driver Shafts

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

GrafalloyBlueRedImages
The Grafalloy Prolaunch is not a new design, it has been with us for a long time. It got a new paint job this year. As companies get better at making shafts, the quality and consistency of products gets better. What I saw in measuring a the $40 ProLaunch Blue and Red was beyond what I expected. Radial consistency was 98.9% with a 0.8% standard deviation. These shafts are round and will get no benefit from alignment. And the bend profiles were also consistent. There were no outliers in the 10 shafts I measured. That is not always the case, and it is rarely the case with a $40 shaft. I am impressed.

ProLaunchRBEiGjTb

Beginning with this review I am introducing a new method for rating shaft stiffness. The method comes from inside one of the major club companies that has an EI measuring instrument. They use area under the EI curve to compare shaft to shaft stiffness. Frequency measured at the butt of a shaft works on shafts with the same bend profiles. When shafts have different bend profiles butt frequency does not give an accurate measurement. Have you ever heard or said, ‘this shaft plays softer (or harder) than it measures. Did it ever occur to you that you were basically saying the measurement system you were using does not work?

Using area under the EI curve takes into account every point of the shaft. The correlation with deflection measurements is incredibly high. It appears that we have stumbled on a shaft stiffness rating system that actually works.

Grafalloy rates the launch of the Blue as higher than the Red. Look at the chart above and you will see that with the same stiffness rating the Red deflects less than the Blue. The launch rating given by Grafalloy is validated. The more expensive, $80 Grafalloy Blue is also rated low launch and is validated by the deflection numbers. It has a stiffer tip, pushing the kick point up the shaft. Radial quality of the Grafalloy Blue, 99.6% with a standard deviation of 0.5%. Translation, great quality and consistency and a notification to the shaft business that quality is possible in affordable products.

Matrix Program F15 Iron Shaft Review

Leave a reply

Iron Golf Shafts – Matrix Program F15

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

ProgramF15Image
The Matrix Program iron shaft has been with us for some time. The 2015 Matrix Program F15 is a subtle evolution of what has been a very successful shaft. Matrix, acting on club builder input, creating balance points in this version of the Program that will easily build into D2-D3 swing weights. The earlier Program shafts were white. If you had tested the Program and liked it, as many did, you lived with the white. The change to a neutral color, a shiny silver gray, removes an entry barrier for many.

The Matrix Program F15 is available in three weights, 80, 95 and 125 grams. As is typical with most shafts, weight and stiffness are interrelated. One thing you will notice when handling this shaft is the wall thickness. In carbon fiber tubes, wall thickness creates hoop stiffness and torsional rigidity. The Program F15 has both, the torque numbers are as low as it gets, and the hoop stiffness negates any possible ovalizing during the golf swing. That means the head is going to follow your hands. When you square off you hands the head is going to follow. The impact wave coming up the shaft is solid thud.

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