Iron Re-shaft experiment - What might be a good combo?

[Herm33]

Hi all - First off, I know I'm best served with a detailed fitting with a launch monitor, but who knows when those sort of services will be back up and going and even the driving range at my club is closed until further notice so my best bet will just be on course experimentation for now.

I have a handful of older iron sets that I want to retrofit so I've decided to do some experimenting with the 6 and/or 7 irons and see what feels good and produces a nice trajectory.

Clubhead models are: '88 Hogan Redline Apex, Hogan Apex Plus (the '99-01 version), and MacGregor PCB Tours.

A little about me - float between 2-4 handicap, iron play not necessarily my strength. Last time I was measured by a quality LM my 6 iron SS was around 83-84 mph. Teaching pro has tried to get me to keep my hands wider in transition from the top as I have a tendency to get too narrow on the downswing (drop the hands too quickly on the first move down.) I don't transition very hard from the top though as my tempo is pretty smooth. I generally don't need much help with height from about 7 iron on down but would like to see the 4-6 irons flight higher. I do realize that has much more to do with club head design, swing speed, AOA, etc. than a shaft can necessarily fix.

I have the following on hand that I'm thinking of experimenting with:

Nippon 1150 Stiff - have 2 of these in a 7 iron length

Nippon 950GH Stiff - 6 iron length

PX LZ 5.5 - 6 iron length

Nippon Modus 120R - 6 iron length

So....given those 3 iron head designs, what might I expect to see or what shaft might you first test in which clubhead? I've got all the necessary tools at home so I can swap these out without too much trouble after trying one in one clubhead. Also not opposed to trying something straight in and then soft stepping once to experiment even further. I'm kind of a classic in-between guy on regular vs stiff depending on the shaft which is why I have some different flexes on hand here.

Thanks for any feedback anyone might have on trying any of these in the past!

 

[Herm33]

Should also note what I'm playing now and in the past and like/dislike:

Current gamer set is 716 T-MB's with DG AMT S300. Got a great deal from a retiring rep so went with those even though I knew the shaft probably wasn't completely right. It's a pretty good shaft, maybe a touch too stiff and slightly too heavy for my aging self.

My preference is probably in that 110-118 range but I've hit the Nippon 950 in a fitting before when I had Mizuno MP63's and it came down to the wire between that and what I ultimately went with which was the KBS Tour R+. I played that MP63 KBS set for about 5 years.

[rexroh]

You have 3 six iron shafts and 2 seven iron shafts if I read correctly.

you have three different iron heads. I would weigh the iron heads to see if they are much the same weight and check bottom bore to ground lengths. If these are all the same I would use three six irons in whatever shafts. Then test and record what you considered best and why. Then change them over and finally do a third change if you felt necessary.

do the same with the seven irons as well.

The problem may come when you have head weights that are greatly different or BBGM different. This will have an effect on swing weight and heft. At this stage you do not want to be cutting shafts to length.

[Herm33]

Thanks for the advice. Head weights on 6 irons are pretty close - PCB Tour 265, Redline 261, Apex Plus 262.

slight issue with BBGM though. I just did a dry fit measurement on the uncut LZ shaft and the two Hogan’s are the same but Mac is 1/4” different (shorter) when cutting to a final length of 37.5”. Not a huge deal, I can just choke down a touch on that one.

[Howard_Jones]

Since we play shafts to the same play length no matter model, the most important shaft spec is WEIGHT, so simply sort those shafts by weight.

GH950S would be the lightest, next is Modus 120R, then its LZ 5.5 and GH1150S on top with the highest weight of them.