I watched your 8 iron spinner shaft video and the trackman results showed higher spin and lower launch. Would be great to see all three options compared. Standard shaft, 8 iron spinner and tiger stepped. Thanks
Which is the opposite of what Dave Pell found, I.e. drop a flex per wedge! Tiger does drop a flex on his SW/LW then trims them to stiffen them a tad. Maybe put it on the CPM machine and see how much stiffer it really made it and then see if hitting it vs non Tiger trim affects spin and launch
Great video! I like s400 in my irons. But I would like them to be a little more stiffer and less spin. I was wonder if I tipped them 1/4 how much stiffer would that make them?
This is very interesting. I have always felt with DG shafts the wedges would already play softer so why put shafts another quarter flex softer to these. Also, I recently put shafts a quarter flex stiffer into my wedges (vs irons) but felt very comfortable with them, guess it probably makes them play the same flex as my irons.
Was the weight similar with the stiffer wedge shafts? Usually static or swing weight will be more noticeable than flex in wedges, at least for most golfers.
Very cool, to golf nerds like me at least. This may be moot because most modern graphite shafts probably have a wedge specific shaft, but can this work for graphite shafts too? Both for tiger stepping and the spinner mod?
I'd like to hear your thoughts on .370 shafts since most are tip trimmed to a specific iron anyway. Would you still tip trim an additional 3/8" for a G/S/L wedge?
So this would effectively be advantageous in obtaining a heavier swing weight in a wedge without having to add weight to the insert of the shaft tip or clubhead?
Yes, you would do all the same weighting measurements as with any other club. This is really no different from building with parallel tip .370 blanks where you tip and butt trim each shaft.
Hello, I am just learning about this method of soft stepping and want to try it. I use my 56* for bunkers, green side chipping and everything in between, up to 90 yards. Would you recommend taking my same iron shafts(KBS Tour 105 stiff 110g) and Tiger stepping the wedge shaft or getting the same 8 iron shaft in X Stiff and soft stepping?
Hi AJ, great vids! I have a question regarding one of your past videos on club fitting. I’m going to get fitted for the first time. There are so many options out there. Personally for you if you were to get fitted would you go to a chain, box store or more of a local small store to get fitted? Thanks!
First I would decide what I am looking for. Are you going in blind or do you already have a list of contenders? Second, are you looking for stock options or interested in some speciality aftermarket shafts etc? Third question budget? Really comes down to how many options you want available to you to try. Some people will want 100 options while others want to keep it simple. I always lean towards small independent fitter builders if available. Options may be more limited but the knowledge is usually far greater. Brand agnostic fitters give lots of options, but know they aren't usually "agnostic" and don't be surprised if you get fit into a very expensive setup. Big box stores will really be hit or miss based on who you end up dealing with. Some are really good, some aren't.
8i is soft stepping This is effectively hard stepping? Basically lower launch and lower spin? Any numbers on how big a change this makes? 200rpm less spin...400rpm?
Didn't actually get LM data on this as it was a build I was doing for a friend and just decided to make a video. The data we got from the X100 8i shaft demo showed 3-4 degrees lower launch and 1000rpm spin increase at least (saw much higher with higher speed player). I would guess that we should see something similar if we were comparing tipped vs non tipped shaft.
The concept would work for any shaft but it really matters for shaft sets that only go down to a 9i shaft and use the same 9i shaft for all the wedges.
@@EFGMC thank you for your prompt response.. ok, any suggestions on what to try in my instance.. seems like the project x lz shaft is a bit different in that regard, being that they have a specific 9 iron shaft and a PW shaft? Or can I just send the wedges to you?! Lol.. I’d prefer that.. thanks for any assistance!
A J, I watched your video a couple of times and you kinda lost me a bit; if I have a DG 9 iron shaft and want to place it in my PW I can tip trim 3/8”- I got that. What about my other wedges? AW, SW and LW? Do I continue tip trimming? Since they are, I think, respectively heavier heads? Thanks for the response and your videos
You could. This is where you will need to personalize it. Do you play the 9 and PW at the same 9i shaft and then tip the GW, SW etc 3/8? Or do you progressively tip from the PW going 1/4 to 3/8, to 1/2? Either one is an option and honestly when talking about such small changes it's hard to say if a golfer will even notice those changes. I can't answer it for you unfortunately. Really comes down to your best educated guess and trial and error.
Recoil makes a PW shaft so it's slightly different from Dynamic Gold who stops at the 9i shaft. That being said, you definitely can tip a bit more off the PW Recoil shaft to play in your high lofted wedges. Result should be lower launch and higher spin compared to just using the standard PW version.
Hi AJ, great videos! I have a question. Say, I've a 9 iron shaft same shaft as my rest of the irons, it's not a DG shaft. would I be able to fit on my PW to 58° lop wedge same length as my 9 iron without trimming the tip? Thank you
Hi AJ, Off topic here. I have a senior flex shaft and want to know how to stiffen it to be more regular flex. My plan is to cut 1" off tip and then cut to length for a 3wood (it's driver length now). Any suggestions on this? Thanks,
You could ream out the hosel. Personally I always prefer to use constant weight shafts which are almost always .355 tip (Nippon and Steelfiber being exceptions) so I will always lean towards a taper shaft and making adjustments to it need be. I think weight matching is far more important than frequency matching, though some will disagree.
Adding loft adds bounce and vice versa for lowering loft. I would check what your bounce is on each as you don't want too much or too little for your game.
Engineer/45-year hobbyist club maker here. As far as your calliper measurements are concerned, you compared the top of the hosel bore with the diameter of a point on the shaft near the tip. I think you’d be better to measure the top of the hosel bore and then find and mark the point near the tip of the shaft with that same outside diameter. Then you could compare the length of shaft between the mark and the tip with the hosel bore depth to see if the shaft can be tip trimmed 3/8” and still fit all the way into the hosel. More complicated to explain this than to actually do it.
Agree. Actually what I did, however my arm got in the way of some of my video so I had to edit things down and ended up with what you see. It's really just a question of the shaft diameter more than the hosel. Hosel will almost always have space, shaft flare and chrome thickness usually where any issue would arise.
Tend to disagree….if you measure a std Nippon 8i 105 or 120S shaft and compare it to a Nippon 105 W or 120W shaft….you will find their profiles to be very similar…
@@apaulmcdonough2170 …understand …if you tip a .370” shaft for a W length to the 8i, of a similar profile as DG S300, 400, X100, it should have same effect. No golfers are alike. I flat flex all my graphites because I’m old and slow. Only been at this 25 years. Things change and shaft profiles change faster than minutiae head design changes which are all about reducing fully burdened cost, IMO.
Not sure you are understanding what we are doing here with these two videos. The 8i set up is using a stiffer flex version of the "standard" S400 or S200 wedge shaft. The 8i being soft stepped 1x to give us a slightly stiffer profile. The Tiger stepping method is using an S300 or similar shaft for a 9i, and modifying it to a wedge shaft profile. This profile was available about 20-25 years ago but was discontinued. All of this is with .355 taper tip shafts.
I understand. I’m not focused on S200 or S300 or S400s. What I’m trying to convey is that if you take a 37” 9/W shaft in Nippon ( maybe KBS) and compare it to a Nippon 105 W or 115 or 120 W shaft you Find it to be similar to the 8i shaft as relates to butt stiffness. My guess is the ‘Tiger’ setup is for Tiger, and maybe similar W speeds. He’s 1 of a kind. Just sharing not arguing.
how do u know how much tigers wedges are tipped? Tigers PW and 9i are the same length and same head weight therefore he’s not doing anything different to his PW than he is his 9i. And his other wedge shafts are not even the same flex or weight as the PW and 9i. I don’t think you have a clue about anything that specific with tigers shafts outside of what’s posted on the internet.
Just going off of what Bob Vokey has said. Does Tiger currently do this? Correct, I don't know. But he did it in the past and it's something that might help some golfers so take it or leave it.
@@EFGMC bob vokey has never built tigers wedges. Mike Taylor has been building these irons and wedges since the Nike days. Bob vokey has no idea either. Not that you care to know but hed be the one to reach out too. To further the discussion on a technical standpoint though wouldn’t a PW already be slightly stiffer in flex than the 9i being that it’s cut 1/4 to 1/2 shorter? There’s a reason wedge shafts all have the same flex from almost every major shaft manufacture. I don’t think there is a measurable difference when u consider the length adjustment in wedges. I Havnt measure the head weights from 52-60 but I’m assuming there a smaller variance in wedges than there is in irons due to most of them only being 1/4 inch different in length.
@@jwild5360Wrong Bob Vokey built and tuned Tigers wedges when TW was with Titleist. He went from Cleveland 588 raw wedges to 200 Series Vokey Raw wedges and Bob worked direct with TW on them.
@@brandonlerman1540 that’s what the internet claims and might be true might not. I don’t think the wedges were made by vokey. I think they were made in the same factory as his irons which came from miura Japan. Bob may have did some testing with him or worked on the sole etc but I don’t think they were vokeys actual wedges
Howard is a wealth of knowledge!
On a whim I soft stepped DG TI X100 2x for my 3 wedge shafts beyond PW and found a perfect feel, for me anyway. New Cleveland RTX heads. Thanks
_aaaaw_ yeah!
I watched your 8 iron spinner shaft video and the trackman results showed higher spin and lower launch. Would be great to see all three options compared. Standard shaft, 8 iron spinner and tiger stepped. Thanks
Which is the opposite of what Dave Pell found, I.e. drop a flex per wedge! Tiger does drop a flex on his SW/LW then trims them to stiffen them a tad. Maybe put it on the CPM machine and see how much stiffer it really made it and then see if hitting it vs non Tiger trim affects spin and launch
I used to bore out .355 to .370 on club head to fit my cut shaft, but its a very slow process with only hand tools.
Great video! I like s400 in my irons. But I would like them to be a little more stiffer and less spin. I was wonder if I tipped them 1/4 how much stiffer would that make them?
Very interesting video!!! Could you make a video on your thoughts about spine and flo…thanks for sharing!!!!
Done.
th-cam.com/video/G07mO85LFyE/w-d-xo.html
Also did one on SST Pure which is in the same ballpark.
th-cam.com/video/EoTf0d-Aiz4/w-d-xo.html
This is very interesting. I have always felt with DG shafts the wedges would already play softer so why put shafts another quarter flex softer to these. Also, I recently put shafts a quarter flex stiffer into my wedges (vs irons) but felt very comfortable with them, guess it probably makes them play the same flex as my irons.
Was the weight similar with the stiffer wedge shafts? Usually static or swing weight will be more noticeable than flex in wedges, at least for most golfers.
Another great video, Thanks AJ. What are your thoughts about backweighting clubs?
Will be doing a back weighting video very soon!
Very cool, to golf nerds like me at least. This may be moot because most modern graphite shafts probably have a wedge specific shaft, but can this work for graphite shafts too? Both for tiger stepping and the spinner mod?
You can tip any shaft and make it even stiffer. So you could take a graphite PW shaft and tip it a little in order to get the same result.
Maybe it’s Tiger stepping because he’s the only one that could feel a change in a steel shaft deflection of 3/8 inch
I've heard that it was Bob Vokey who first did this. Not sure where it falls in the timeline vs when Tiger started doing it.
I'd like to hear your thoughts on .370 shafts since most are tip trimmed to a specific iron anyway. Would you still tip trim an additional 3/8" for a G/S/L wedge?
.370 are different since you do tip trim almost all of them. You can cut a bit extra if you want.
Where would a taper tip S-400 8 iron shaft tip trimmed by a 1/4 or 3/8 end up? Would it be slightly softer than the standard S-300/S-400 flex?
You just created the 9i shaft, just a bit lighter.
So this would effectively be advantageous in obtaining a heavier swing weight in a wedge without having to add weight to the insert of the shaft tip or clubhead?
@@cjhenry0101 No, any weight change will be too small to even perceive.
AJ, can you do both? Tiger Stepping with the lower flex 8-iron shaft?
You could but you'd really just be making the 9 iron shaft so simpler to just use the 9.
Good info just wondering do you not have to check swing weight after cutting as well?
Yes, you would do all the same weighting measurements as with any other club. This is really no different from building with parallel tip .370 blanks where you tip and butt trim each shaft.
Thought this was going to be tips on walking thru a Perkins parking lot...
Hello, I am just learning about this method of soft stepping and want to try it. I use my 56* for bunkers, green side chipping and everything in between, up to 90 yards. Would you recommend taking my same iron shafts(KBS Tour 105 stiff 110g) and Tiger stepping the wedge shaft or getting the same 8 iron shaft in X Stiff and soft stepping?
Either one will work as you are really doing the same thing, just two different routes to the same destination.
Interesting
Hi AJ, great vids! I have a question regarding one of your past videos on club fitting. I’m going to get fitted for the first time. There are so many options out there. Personally for you if you were to get fitted would you go to a chain, box store or more of a local small store to get fitted? Thanks!
First I would decide what I am looking for. Are you going in blind or do you already have a list of contenders? Second, are you looking for stock options or interested in some speciality aftermarket shafts etc? Third question budget?
Really comes down to how many options you want available to you to try. Some people will want 100 options while others want to keep it simple.
I always lean towards small independent fitter builders if available. Options may be more limited but the knowledge is usually far greater.
Brand agnostic fitters give lots of options, but know they aren't usually "agnostic" and don't be surprised if you get fit into a very expensive setup. Big box stores will really be hit or miss based on who you end up dealing with. Some are really good, some aren't.
8i is soft stepping
This is effectively hard stepping? Basically lower launch and lower spin? Any numbers on how big a change this makes? 200rpm less spin...400rpm?
Didn't actually get LM data on this as it was a build I was doing for a friend and just decided to make a video. The data we got from the X100 8i shaft demo showed 3-4 degrees lower launch and 1000rpm spin increase at least (saw much higher with higher speed player). I would guess that we should see something similar if we were comparing tipped vs non tipped shaft.
Would the concept work with any shaft? For instance, project x lz shaft?
The concept would work for any shaft but it really matters for shaft sets that only go down to a 9i shaft and use the same 9i shaft for all the wedges.
@@EFGMC thank you for your prompt response.. ok, any suggestions on what to try in my instance.. seems like the project x lz shaft is a bit different in that regard, being that they have a specific 9 iron shaft and a PW shaft? Or can I just send the wedges to you?! Lol.. I’d prefer that.. thanks for any assistance!
@@square2scratch844 Email me,
adam@elitefitgolf.com
A J, I watched your video a couple of times and you kinda lost me a bit; if I have a DG 9 iron shaft and want to place it in my PW I can tip trim 3/8”- I got that. What about my other wedges? AW, SW and LW? Do I continue tip trimming? Since they are, I think, respectively heavier heads? Thanks for the response and your videos
You could. This is where you will need to personalize it. Do you play the 9 and PW at the same 9i shaft and then tip the GW, SW etc 3/8? Or do you progressively tip from the PW going 1/4 to 3/8, to 1/2? Either one is an option and honestly when talking about such small changes it's hard to say if a golfer will even notice those changes.
I can't answer it for you unfortunately. Really comes down to your best educated guess and trial and error.
AJ i play recoil shafts. is this an option or does it only exist in steel. thank you and enjoy your content!
Recoil makes a PW shaft so it's slightly different from Dynamic Gold who stops at the 9i shaft. That being said, you definitely can tip a bit more off the PW Recoil shaft to play in your high lofted wedges. Result should be lower launch and higher spin compared to just using the standard PW version.
Hi AJ, great videos! I have a question. Say, I've a 9 iron shaft same shaft as my rest of the irons, it's not a DG shaft. would I be able to fit on my PW to 58° lop wedge same length as my 9 iron without trimming the tip? Thank you
Yes it would fit. It would play more flexible in the higher lofted wedges b/c of the additional head weight.
@@EFGMC Thank you for your reply AJ....
Hi AJ, Off topic here. I have a senior flex shaft and want to know how to stiffen it to be more regular flex. My plan is to cut 1" off tip and then cut to length for a 3wood (it's driver length now). Any suggestions on this? Thanks,
If it's going into a 3 wood I'd cut 1 1/2 probably in order to both stiffen it and support the 3 wood head weight.
@@EFGMC Thanks for the help. Like the videos also.
Given all the influence Tiger has, it seems odd that he couldn’t just ask True Temper to make a wedge specific version of any shaft he wanted to play!
But the way he did it is the way he wanted it. Why spend shit ton of money o reproduce something they already basically have?
They used to make one and then at some point decided to remove it from the lineup. Not sure why.
Why wouldn’t you just drill out the hosel to run the 370 parallel tip and tip trim to whatever frequency you want to get the right flex?
You could ream out the hosel. Personally I always prefer to use constant weight shafts which are almost always .355 tip (Nippon and Steelfiber being exceptions) so I will always lean towards a taper shaft and making adjustments to it need be.
I think weight matching is far more important than frequency matching, though some will disagree.
Hey i have a 58 and 52 is it better to deloft a 56 or add loft on a 54?
Adding loft adds bounce and vice versa for lowering loft. I would check what your bounce is on each as you don't want too much or too little for your game.
Pretty much hard stepping but just with a little more precision, maybe?
Yes. Hard stepping for the wedges.
Engineer/45-year hobbyist club maker here. As far as your calliper measurements are concerned, you compared the top of the hosel bore with the diameter of a point on the shaft near the tip. I think you’d be better to measure the top of the hosel bore and then find and mark the point near the tip of the shaft with that same outside diameter. Then you could compare the length of shaft between the mark and the tip with the hosel bore depth to see if the shaft can be tip trimmed 3/8” and still fit all the way into the hosel. More complicated to explain this than to actually do it.
Agree. Actually what I did, however my arm got in the way of some of my video so I had to edit things down and ended up with what you see. It's really just a question of the shaft diameter more than the hosel. Hosel will almost always have space, shaft flare and chrome thickness usually where any issue would arise.
Tend to disagree….if you measure a std Nippon 8i 105 or 120S shaft and compare it to a Nippon 105 W or 120W shaft….you will find their profiles to be very similar…
This is specific to the Dynamic Gold Shaft(s)
@@apaulmcdonough2170 …understand …if you tip a .370” shaft for a W length to the 8i, of a similar profile as DG S300, 400, X100, it should have same effect. No golfers are alike. I flat flex all my graphites because I’m old and slow. Only been at this 25 years. Things change and shaft profiles change faster than minutiae head design changes which are all about reducing fully burdened cost, IMO.
Not sure you are understanding what we are doing here with these two videos. The 8i set up is using a stiffer flex version of the "standard" S400 or S200 wedge shaft. The 8i being soft stepped 1x to give us a slightly stiffer profile.
The Tiger stepping method is using an S300 or similar shaft for a 9i, and modifying it to a wedge shaft profile. This profile was available about 20-25 years ago but was discontinued.
All of this is with .355 taper tip shafts.
I understand. I’m not focused on S200 or S300 or S400s. What I’m trying to convey is that if you take a 37” 9/W shaft in Nippon ( maybe KBS) and compare it to a Nippon 105 W or 115 or 120 W shaft you Find it to be similar to the 8i shaft as relates to butt stiffness. My guess is the ‘Tiger’ setup is for Tiger, and maybe similar W speeds. He’s 1 of a kind. Just sharing not arguing.
My dude, but you gotta tell the viewers WHY the tiger stepping is cool and what it does for the ball spin, etc.
It's in there somewhere, just didn't show it this go around. Lower launch and higher spin, just like the 8i trick!
how do u know how much tigers wedges are tipped? Tigers PW and 9i are the same length and same head weight therefore he’s not doing anything different to his PW than he is his 9i. And his other wedge shafts are not even the same flex or weight as the PW and 9i.
I don’t think you have a clue about anything that specific with tigers shafts outside of what’s posted on the internet.
Just going off of what Bob Vokey has said. Does Tiger currently do this? Correct, I don't know. But he did it in the past and it's something that might help some golfers so take it or leave it.
@@EFGMC bob vokey has never built tigers wedges. Mike Taylor has been building these irons and wedges since the Nike days. Bob vokey has no idea either. Not that you care to know but hed be the one to reach out too.
To further the discussion on a technical standpoint though wouldn’t a PW already be slightly stiffer in flex than the 9i being that it’s cut 1/4 to 1/2 shorter? There’s a reason wedge shafts all have the same flex from almost every major shaft manufacture. I don’t think there is a measurable difference when u consider the length adjustment in wedges. I Havnt measure the head weights from 52-60 but I’m assuming there a smaller variance in wedges than there is in irons due to most of them only being 1/4 inch different in length.
@@jwild5360Wrong Bob Vokey built and tuned Tigers wedges when TW was with Titleist. He went from Cleveland 588 raw wedges to 200 Series Vokey Raw wedges and Bob worked direct with TW on them.
@@brandonlerman1540 that’s what the internet claims and might be true might not. I don’t think the wedges were made by vokey. I think they were made in the same factory as his irons which came from miura Japan. Bob may have did some testing with him or worked on the sole etc but I don’t think they were vokeys actual wedges
@@jwild5360 Were his Raw Cleveland 588 made by Miura too? What about his Mizuno MP29s?
This is too much😕
Come on! Focus!