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AXE Tour X Graphite shaft study

Nippon Shafts
Art M said:
i pulled the kbs tour, 370 parallel, 130g ot of my cb3 7 iron yesterday. i have been playing for a couple years and those are really the only shaft I "know". i have been fitted before, with the mizzie shaft opti and at a srixon fitting. all three time suggested kbs tour stiff as the first choice. my sole purpose was simply to test the axe 95g stiff to get a feel for the 95g shaft. i have never played with irons that have been shafted with graphite except an occasional hit of my buddies mizuno ez forged irons with regular flex graphite shaft. they do not play well for me. i did the install myself. i hit the iron today out on the fairway, 25-30 mph wind, 31°f, as a blizzard is approaching. this shaft has a very good feel to it. i can feel it load and release nicely. it is no way near whippy. it is comfortable. the feedback i get is very good. in no way does it feel dead. i can feel where the contact if on the face all the time. a pure flush feel great. thin or toes send a bit of vibration to my hands. not in a bad way. like cold steel, but in a good way. i can not comment, with surety, on the flight path because of the wind. I did not try to control the flight because my time was limited. i just hit normally. there is no loss in distance, for sure. i can not say longer because of the winds play on the flight. same thing with height all be it the ball is flying high, higher than the kbs tour. once again wind affected im sure. but they do feel good. now, if the forecast is correct, i will not be playing again soon...
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i walked around for nine holes today with only the axe 7 iron and my putter. I played birdie, par, bogie golf. shot a 42, six over. (as an aside, it's amazing how much thought i put into playing which club during a normal round. also how much time i ponder new equipment. a simple 7 iron and a putter today for a good 9 hole score. i'm going to try not to overthink things from now on. lol) the dispersion was very good. i was often hitting 3 balls at a time in an effort to judge distanceand more often than not they were within a couple yards of each other. the trajectory was high. not ballooning but high. distance ranged from 160 to 162 with a moderately aggressive swing. a couple long balls at 170 when the ball was sitting oh so right. a couple short ball around 150 when toe hit or caught thin. (the cb3 is a pretty forgiving iron head anyway) conditions were 40° and the ground gave close to no roll. i find this shaft performs best for me when i swing moderately and smooth, which i like because i want to take it easier on myself while swinging this year. my next venture will be to play my set and make a more direct comparison to my kbs
 
It's almost comical how well you can score playing just a few clubs. Glad to see you having fun experimenting.

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Looking through your thread, it got me to setup a 7 iron apex pro with the 85g tour x. I added a little counterweight to offset the clubhead and now playing at around D0. I personally love the lighter overall weight and D0 SW. But your rave reviews on the 95g just got me thinking if that will make the club feel a little bit more solid or I'm just overthinking it.

Also your take on the wedges also got my gears turning now, thinking that perhaps I would do a mixed set for a matching MOI effect with 105 on wedges and 95 on 8-9 and 85 on rest of the clubs or am i just crazy.
 
Plin said:
Looking through your thread, it got me to setup a 7 iron apex pro with the 85g tour x. I added a little counterweight to offset the clubhead and now playing at around D0. I personally love the lighter overall weight and D0 SW. But your rave reviews on the 95g just got me thinking if that will make the club feel a little bit more solid or I'm just overthinking it.
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I think it comes down to personal feel, I want to start tinkering with the 85 exactly as you did. Counter weight the club to get it a little closer to the 95 and see how it feels. So far their have been 4 rather agressive swingers and all have prefered the 95. I need that slower swing speed even tempo guy but being back out to sea I'm at some one else's mercy. What I like about the 85 is that I can turn the ball over easier than the others. I have an 85 in my DBM 5 iron gamer and I now bit a baby draw with it. So as I stated I believe it's feel related to the player. The 85 shaft worked well despite what some of the test subjects thought.
 
Plin said:
Looking through your thread, it got me to setup a 7 iron apex pro with the 85g tour x. I added a little counterweight to offset the clubhead and now playing at around D0. I personally love the lighter overall weight and D0 SW. But your rave reviews on the 95g just got me thinking if that will make the club feel a little bit more solid or I'm just overthinking it.

Also your take on the wedges also got my gears turning now, thinking that perhaps I would do a mixed set for a matching MOI effect with 105 on wedges and 95 on 8-9 and 85 on rest of the clubs or am i just crazy.
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What did you use for a counter weight and how many grams did you wind up with.
 
The head was 280. Club length little over 37" I used 50 gram ace crossline grip with two wraps and about 5 gram tape at the butt end.

As I'm progressing with the build I'm learning more about what exactly I'm looking for. So just for the sake of experiment I might email robin and ask about his take on the matching Moi method.


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Just emailed Robin, will report back with his thoughts and my progress.

Thanks for starting the trend and giving me an idea to finally build a set I was looking for.

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No problem, let me know if he doesn't get back to you, he is busy as hell these days and is all over the place but he loves to help guys out more than anything.

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Plin said:
The head was 280. Club length little over 37" I used 50 gram ace crossline grip with two wraps and about 5 gram tape at the butt end.

As I'm progressing with the build I'm learning more about what exactly I'm looking for. So just for the sake of experiment I might email robin and ask about his take on the matching Moi method.


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The 85 gram shafts were coming in at a D2 or so with the Maltby heads. I have a set of z 545 srixon on the way and will have fun playing with the shafts in those heads. I hit the Nippon 950 GH shafts a mile. Can wait to compare them with the AXE shafts.
 
Popeye said:
The 85 gram shafts were coming in at a D2 or so with the Maltby heads. I have a set of z 545 srixon on the way and will have fun playing with the shafts in those heads. I hit the Nippon 950 GH shafts a mile. Can wait to compare them with the AXE shafts.
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The feel for me as I'm going through these different setups is that it's not so much the swing weight as it is the overall weight relative to the swing weight that I'm really trying to get a finger on. What I've found is that I don't mind a heavier swing weight, especially at the longer irons, however the overall weight has to be about 420g or below. As for the wedges I'm ok with a 470g club but the swing weight I prefer to be C9.

Definitely looking forward to seeing your thoughts with the different combination of heads. I'm sticking with the Apex pro right now as I did have good overall success last season with KBS Tour V shafts.

PS. nothing like spine aligning and testing for FLO to get that solid feel.
 
smooth tempo, 95 gram, stiff 7 iron about 160 yards. about on par with kbs tour 130 parallel. today, no wind, 43°, i was hitting balls with the jacket off for full, easy movement. i was striking well so i started to step on them. with full controlled effort i saw a soaring flight, pga esque, consistently landing at 178-180. they feel great loading and unloading. I am wondering if i would get the same feeling with a less effort swing in a regular shaft. or the ball may just balloon an me
 
Typically a regular flex for someone who can load the stiff shaft properly would see a little too much spin and perhaps too high of a flight. Hard to say exactly but if you can hit a 7 iron 180 with stiff flex I wouldn't venture into regular flex.

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Haven't heard anything back from Robin.

Popeye, would you happen to have the stats on the weight of the 105g shafts after you cut to length? I'm still trying to get some numbers before I go ahead and order the shafts. Thanks!
 
Which head? And I figure standard length?
 
I was more thinking the raw weight of it after you've trimmed it for the wedges.
 
Ok, I can weight one of them tomorrow
 
Popeye said:
Ok, I can weight one of them tomorrow
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Awesome. Thanks a lot. I'm trying to get them to about the same weight after trimming to see if that's something feasible.
 
I played the 95 grams shafts in a set of J40 dual pockets and can easily say these are a great shaft. Great dispersion, highish ball flight, no balloon balls, great ball feel.. couldnt ask for more. For graphite shafts, I also have lots of experience w. Recoils and the old Graphite Design GAT95 shaft, and these Axe shafts play just as well and are quite a bit less expensive. Am not much for the looks of the shaft, but thats obviously subjective
 
Plin said:
Awesome. Thanks a lot. I'm trying to get them to about the same weight after trimming to see if that's something feasible.
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The finished weight of the 60° wedge that I have is 435g. Since I already knew the weight of the head and the grip the finished shaft weight is 89.5 grams. The wedge is constructed with the very long hosel neck and it's pretty much identical to a Cleveland head in overall size so the other wedges I have in the 105 shaft should be near identical in weight. My longer irons are using the 95g shafts but have a shorter more typical iron hosel so the playing/finished weights of the 95g shafts as compared to the wedge 105s are very close. I notice zero difference in feel using the two different shafts and wedge performance is stellar.
Hope this helps.
 
How do you like the Maltby heads?
 
MrFlapjack said:
How do you like the Maltby heads?
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The maltby heads are fairly hot, ball leaps off of the face. Loft for loft they are long. Not as strong lofted as some of the latest OEM offerings but they do not give up distance when direct loft comparisons are made. Ihave yet to hit them off of grass so,,,For feel wise,,, I'll leave that comment out for now. They are very forgiving and the hitting area at the indoor range is pretty thin so most contact is very low on the face. Doesn't bother the KE4s at all but low contact isn't the best indication of feel. I could definitely game them.
 
Popeye said:
The maltby heads are fairly hot, ball leaps off of the face. Loft for loft they are long. Not as strong lofted as some of the latest OEM offerings but they do not give up distance when direct loft comparisons are made. Ihave yet to hit them off of grass so,,,For feel wise,,, I'll leave that comment out for now. They are very forgiving and the hitting area at the indoor range is pretty thin so most contact is very low on the face. Doesn't bother the KE4s at all but low contact isn't the best indication of feel. I could definitely game them.
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That sounds good. Going to pick some up for a build soon, and there's not really any reviews on them that I found. I like the fact that I should be able to drag the CG closer to the toe if I bump up the swing weight as well.
 
MrFlapjack said:
That sounds good. Going to pick some up for a build soon, and there's not really any reviews on them that I found. I like the fact that I should be able to drag the CG closer to the toe if I bump up the swing weight as well.
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It's a design they have tweaked for years, I found them very easy to hit and to keep online. They would be a very solid set for you or anyone you make them up for. Not sure why they don't have any reviews, even Golfworks own site lacks reviews though they have been out for the second year.
 
Popeye said:
The finished weight of the 60° wedge that I have is 435g. Since I already knew the weight of the head and the grip the finished shaft weight is 89.5 grams. The wedge is constructed with the very long hosel neck and it's pretty much identical to a Cleveland head in overall size so the other wedges I have in the 105 shaft should be near identical in weight. My longer irons are using the 95g shafts but have a shorter more typical iron hosel so the playing/finished weights of the 95g shafts as compared to the wedge 105s are very close. I notice zero difference in feel using the two different shafts and wedge performance is stellar.
Hope this helps.
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Excellent information there. This gives me confidence in going ahead with the build. Ordering shafts today!

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I picked up a set of Z545 irons with the S300 shafts for a price I couldn't pass up $520 shipped for the 3-pw, brand new. The lofts are 3 degrees stronger club to club than the DBM heads. On the simulator hitting a DBM 6 iron and a Z545 7 iron that are near the same Distance wise with near the same lofts,,, were very close but the spin rates with the AXE shafts and DBM heads were ways higher. The Z545 were avg 184 yards and 5800 rpm. The DBM 6 iron was just about the same distance, higher flight and 7400 rpm. On the course the DBM AXE combo stop in their ballmark. So I'm swapping in some AXE shafts into the 6 iron and 9 iron and will see what I have for spin rates.

As I kept going up by the time I got to the 5 irons. The Z545 are a lot easier to hit and a funny thing but the spin rates stop dropping after the 5 iron which has the tungsten added to the heads. The spin was around 3500. That spin rate held to the 3 iron. That 3 iron is a rocket launcher. Anyways, it will be very interesting to test. I also have a set of Z 545s at the shop with the Nippon 950 GH that will be recorded as well. If I can maintain ease of play, distance and get them to stop I may never swap irons again.
 
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