stock shaft v specialist advice please

morning.
I currently have a TM RB 425 - 9.5 with a stock fujikura reamax shaft-stiff.
my swing speed with an iron borders between stiff and medium, I used to have reg graph shafts in my wods but I get much more consistent results having switched to stiff shafts.
Im toying with the idea of swapping out the stock shaft with a view to increasing distance and keeping the ball lower and hope to retain my draw (not always - i can keep the face open with the best of them!)
i
what do i need or need to consider?
ive seen the graffalloy blue - what are the benfeits over a stock shaft etc.
any and all advice appreciated.
wicket

will be watching this one with interest as i have the same concerns with my TM superquad.
the RE-AX shaft seems a little 'dead' to me and im sure i am robbing myself of distance. i play reg in my 3 and 5 wood and get solid distances with very good accuracy.

You need to consider overall bend profile, tip stiffness and total weight, and compare it to what you want.

For a lower ball flight you want a stiffer tip.

hi lowpost
must be a real exciting time for you nowadays as you can change the flight the shape of the flight and the amount of side spine can be cut some.
not that many years ago this would be very hard for clubmaker to do as there was not that much choice in what shafts and heads he could get his hands on.
now you have such a vast range of shafts that get even more each year and there is so much in the new shafts we don't get to hear about but you will have a hard time keeping up with all the new stuff coming out.
it was not that long ago the many club maker would not touch graphite shafts and if the did they only had a choice of a couple.
i so impressed with the way you seem to keep up with all the improvements in shafts and club heads and it wonderful having your advice on this forum.
thanks
bill

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Being relatively new to clubmaking and fitting (compared to some of the players in this game) it seems to me that the vast majority of clubmakers and fitters are stuck with old-boy syndrome; where they 'know all there is' and don't investigate new technologies.

For example, there are tons of people out there still swingweight matching their irons, when MOI matching (progressive swingweighting) seems to proivde, by all accounts, a more similar feel club-to-club (which is what swingweight matching was trying to accomplish).

It's very exciting to have shaft zone profiling going on - a guy that's been in this game a long time has developed a system that has an 85% success rate for fitting driver shafts based on profiles and some key information. The word on the street is that the 15% failures (failure being a guy doesn't like the top recommendation) come from single digits who didn't like the bending feel and players that weren't evaluated, they simply gave the clubfitter numbers (and their numbers were wrong after evaluation).

There's a lot of really interesting research being done all the time - a good clubmaker just needs to keep himself abreast of what's going on (keep a finger on the pulse, as it were) and consider how it may apply to his or her own shop. For example, I was on the TLT bandwagon the minute I heard it was developed. It certainly bucked the status quo (and as I've posted before, I had considered a crude version, but listened to the status quo and abandoned it). But when Tom Wishon learns about it and includes it as a completely viable option - one that all clubmakers should investigate - it furthers the concept that I may, in fact, know a good thing when I see it

Even 3 years ago, before zone profiles (or rather, in the very early stages of it) we still considered butt stiffness (the 'flex' or the 'CPMs' of a shaft) to be the 'true' flex designation, but then we'd still say that a shaft played true to flex, weaker than flex or stiffer than flex based on this number. For example, the Graf. Blue is 'stiff to flex', as well as the AccuFLEX Evolution, and the Graphite Design YS6 is 'soft to flex'. Now we know why - the Graf and the Evo have very stiff tips and mid bend points with relatively soft butt sections, while the YS6 is soft-tipped. Now we know why shafts are 'soft' or 'stiff' to flex. The other thing we can do now is compare the bend profile of your all time favourite shaft and compare it to shafts you're considering, and make relatively accurate predictions as to what you should be able to expect from it.

But yes, the modern clubmaker certainly has more tools and knowledge available to him than even 5 years ago, and certainly 10. All the better to fit you with, my dear.

As you state, the hard part is keeping up. I certainly can't afford to go out and buy a few of every new shaft model and profile them for the database. But fortunately for me there are organisations around that share this info.

It's certainly nice to be able to answer 'why'; not just know that it 'is'.

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I say it too often: If it's golf club shaped, you can play with it.

For the record, I'm a club doctor, not a swing doctor.

wow. thank you for the information. I didnt realise there was so much to it - science or art?
Ive not come across bend profile before. so from the tip I need stif. what about the mid and grip end?
also whats a kick point? ive heard it but not understood it.
are there any shafts you would recomend or is there somewhere I can go to research? sadly launxh monitors dont exist near me.
by the way im aiming to keep the bal low as my course is windy.
the can of worms is now open!
thank you for your guidance
wicket

by the way. apolgies for spelling mistakes etc. im writing this from my pda on a cramped train after a long week! i'm so looking forward to the weekend . esp the golf!

There's a site - www.shaftprofiles.com - that lists different numbers and you can select different models and graph their curves.

Butt stiffness is more or less the 'feel' stiffness. If you like your shafts feeling firmer, go for a firmer butt. Mid stiffness effects the bending feel at the top and the way the shaft feels when it loads (and unloads). Mid bend and kick point are intertwined. Kick point is a vague term to describe how far up or down the shaft the main bend point is.