Oban Hashimoto Golf Shaft Review

Oban Hashimoto 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 OBAN Hashimoto is not a new release, it has been available for several years. I am in the process of updating the data of OBAN shafts to include hoop deformation corrections.

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Russ

Mitsubishi KuroKage Tour Edition TINI Driver Shaft Review

Mitsubishi KuroKage Proto TINI Driver

By Russ Ryden, A Golf Digest America’s 100 Best Clubfitter
Fit2Score, Dallas Fort Worth, Texas

MRC_KuroKage_Tour

The KuroKage Proto TiNi is available only through selected Mitsubishi dealers. I briefly covered this shaft in an earlier review and did not give it the attention it deserves. It is currently in the driver of the #1 player on the PGA tour. His shaft is a custom made version, beyond the 7-XX available to Mistubishi dealers. My friend Biv Wadden has me continuously building drivers for his students with this shaft. When you have as many shafts as I do in my fitting system, some go unnoticed as I tend to fit what I know. Biv’s praise of this shaft got me to take a closer look and start testing the shaft myself.

“For the past year, I’ve been putting most of my competitive students into the KuroKage prototype tour edition shaft with its nickel-titanium tip – in both drivers and 3-woods. It consistently produces higher ball speeds and lower dispersion than any other premium shaft I use.”
Biv Wadden

The result, the Diamana ilima’s, which have had a 3 year run in my fairways have been replaced with KuroKage Proto’s. With a $400 price tag this is not likely to become a best seller. Unless of course you try it and it fits your swing. Here is a look at the shaft measurements from the latest version of the Fit2Score knowledge-base.

MRC__KuroKageProto_EiTBTbRadial integrity of the samples was 99.5% with a 0.3% standard deviation, excellent. Hoop strength was a little lower on the handle end of the 60 gram shafts. The balance is high like most driver shafts now being produced. The profile shows a soft handle, moderate mid, stiff tip design, with a maximum bend in the 14″ region. The lower 12″ of the shaft is wrapped with Titanium Nickel Wire touted by Mitsubishi as able to stretch then immediately regain its original shape. This material is used in the KuroKage Silver, but the Proto has a longer section of the impregnated with the TiNi wire. While both shafts incorporate the TiNi wire, the profiles are about as different as MRC profiles get.

The KuroKage Proto was the first of the heavier shafts to incorporate the TiNi wire that had been used in UltraLight Bassara series of shafts. It was also the first to use 40 ton fiber. Mitsubishi Rayon is now using 80 ton fiber in the hoop layers of the third generation Diamana’s. The Bassara UltraLite Phoenix, released in 2014 is a light weight version of this profile. It adds the lighter weights not offered in the KuroKage Tour Edition shaft.

The profile is very similar to the Diamana ilima. The butt a little stiffer the tip a little softer. It launched much the same for my swing with a little less spin, creating a more boring flight. The 70-XX in the hands of the +110 kids is delivering tight dispersion, with good trajectory and a little lower spin than would be expected for the launch. And that combination, as Biv tells me, equates to distance.

 

Ping CFS Iron Shaft Review

PING CFS Iron Shafts

PingCFS_S_Image

By Russ Ryden, A Golf Digest America’s 100 Best Clubfitter
Fit2Score, Dallas Fort Worth, Texas

As a club fitter it is important to know what your are fitting with and the makeup of my customers existing clubs clubs. I did a reshaft of a set of Ping irons recently and had a chance to profile the pull outs. Here is what I measured:

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Russ


PingCFS_S_EIDfTbFor comparison with other shafts on this site, the 6 iron butt stiffness was 12.9 lbs. Tip to butt ratio was 56%, indicating a mid launch. This is a parallel shaft with a .370 tip. That can be seen in the descending weight as the shafts get shorter. To some degree, the tip stiffness compresses through out the set. This can be seen by looking at the range of mid shaft stiffness compared to tip and butt stiffness range. This is typical in sets made from the same shaft that have the tip section shortened to create additional stiffness as the club heads in the heads get heavier.

What I have seen in measuring other sets of Ping irons was that they achieved both swing weight matches and were very close to MOI matches. I regret not having measured this set before I pulled it apart. The descending weight caused a fairly substantial change in the shafts contribution to the total MOI of the club. Perhaps this is why I have seen swing weight and MOI matched sets of Ping irons.[\resrict]

True Temper XP115 Golf Shaft Review

True Temper XP 115 Iron Shaft

TT_XP115_image

By Russ Ryden, A Golf Digest America’s 100 Best Clubfitter
Fit2Score, Dallas Fort Worth, Texas

A heavier model of the True Temper XP iron shafts was released in 2014. It joins the 95 and 105 gram versions reviewed earlier. I have been told an 85 gram version has been released in Asia and will likely become available in the US in 2015.

I have added new charts and expanded the measurements I am taking on shafts. The new Fit2Score instrument includes an appliance for measuring hoop strength. This is explained in an article in the technology section. The EI bend profiles show the shaft bend profile as a series of measurements of 10 inch sections of the shaft, in 1 inch increments. While this shows us a detailed view of the shaft and allows for comparison with other shafts it does not show how the shaft behaves when loaded. The deflection chart shown below uses the EI measurements with a load applied to the tip and butt of the shaft, illustrating how the shaft bends when loaded. This is a classical method for measuring shafts. It was done on a deflection board. With EI measurements we can do it with math and chart the results.

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Russ

The True Temper XP line of shafts solves a problem I have had with True Temper iron shafts. There simply were too many models for me to understand. Now, with a 95, 105 and 115 version of the same design we have a uniform set of weight and stiffness fitting options in the weight range that fits most golfers. If we look at a subset of this, the 95R, 105R, 105S, 115R and 115S we have a fitting matrix with nearly identical bend profiles. And that is a great mix of mid weight fitting options for a product that is available in many fitting carts.

ACCRA Concept CS1 Golf Driver Shaft Review

ACCRA Concept CS1 Driver Shaft

By Russ Ryden, A Golf Digest America’s 100 Best Clubfitter
Fit2Score, Dallas Fort Worth, Texas

ACCRAconceptCS!_ImagePremium Golf Management evolved from a Canadian distributor of golf shafts to a producer of the ACCRA brand of golf shafts. They have long term business relationships with most of the professional golf club fitter / builders in the world. The golf fitters that attend the annual PGA merchandise show in Florida all arrive a day early for ACCRA day. A day of golf hosted by ACCRA  gives them all a chance to renew relationships and exchange ideas.
ACCRAconceptCS!_S3Summary
The 2014 Concept CS1 is another step in the evolution of ACCRA. Shown to the right is a shaft summary document that comes wrapped around every Concept golf shaft.

Several years ago PGMC, purchased one of the Fit2Score shaft measuring instruments. It brought manufacturing consistency into focus as it has now for the several shaft companies that own the instrument. Through a partnership with Mark Timmes a fully automatic shaft measuring instrument was invented.

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Russ


The ACCRA Concept CS1 is on the cutting edge of shaft design. Find an ACCRA fitting partner and take one for a test drive.

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True Temper Dynamic Gold Pro Iron Shaft

True Temper DG Pro

DG Pro R300
DG Pro S300
DG Pro X100

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

DGProLabelsThe Dynamic Gold Pro iron shaft is now available to the public through True Temper Performance Fitting Centers.  Pro is a play on words, it is short for progressive.  In my golf vernacular the word flighted comes to mind to describe these shafts. But True Temper feels progressive is a better word to describe these sets of shafts.  They are sets. There are three different step patterns in each flex. The design promotes higher launch and spin on the long irons and lower launch and spin on the short irons.  There three step patterns in a set, 2-5, 6-8 and 9-W.  There is a unique design for the 9 iron and the wedge.  This is not always the case in many constant weight shaft sets.  These sets are not exactly constant weight. The weight of the raw shafts decrease slightly from 2 iron to wedge by around 6 grams.  I am told this was necessary to hit the bend profile targets.

The progressive design of these shafts came from tour experience. The modern ball is designed for low spin off of low lofted clubs. This carries over to long irons. Low spin is a benefit on clubs like drivers where the primary objective is distance. But on irons, where control, stability and stopping on impact is important, spin is the golfers friend. The design of the Dynamic Gold Pro “Progressive” is to make the long irons playable, add a little spin to the mid irons and keep the short irons much the same as the Dynamic Gold. We have not tested a set, but the bend profiles indicate a truly progressive set, shaft to shaft through out the set.

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Russ

The length of the tips, the distance between the tip and the first step are different in each flex design. That results in a different launch between the three designs. This, combined with making the softer flex models lighter is a great update to this iconic brand.

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Russ