ant

from what i heard its pretty common and usually referred to as copper underlay. they do it as one way to soften the feel because with modern harder ball pure classic forged blade impact would feel less soft and more solid/harsh than say compared to old balata balls. wont be surprised if epon utilized copper underlay in their irons as well.

man i sure can understand and relate to trying different clubs as well as everyone here but those certainly dont look like they warrant replacement due to damage. i mean yeah it sucks there are scratches but its not like they affect play or appearance at address in any way.

kinky but in any case it falls under foreign material rule which can get you dqed in any competitive 'will get him somehow' type of play.

mmmm....you can always lick your clubs before hitting them, better get it directly from Italy or Corsica tho, real tasty.

its crazy (no pun) how uniform modern premium shafts have become. when i got matrix programs from tsg while back i did ask to align them the same way across the set during the build so that the set is more consistent in feel. the guy who built it (the most knowledgeable and professional guy i had pleasure to deal with, works with tour players as well, when he says something about that stuff i listen) then said look i did what you asked but to be honest these are so uniform there is no practical difference and you can just take them out of the box and install any way you like and they be practically consistent. certainly there could be exceptions and quality control issues but i mean this is the level of manufacturing they can do these days. not saying spining, floing and pureing is waste of time, certainly doesnt hurt, especially in case you are dealing with exception (due to design or manufacturing) or quality control issues and you dont know these things for sure til you try/measure them but with wood shafts personally i dont bother unless manufacturer says otherwise it goes logo down and thats it, less visual noise to look at the better. one problem i see with all those testing processes is they only test shafts in one dimension while in reality it would bend and torque very different to those tests. if you torque it, bend it and droop it at the same time and then let go what would it really do then ?

i dont see anything amazing about it for the reasons i have tried to explain in my previous posts. these things can made in variety of ways because modern materials and manufacturing allows it. i dont know anything about this shaft but it sounds alot like that grafalloy design mentioned above which had even less torque than that (~2 degrees of torque, made in the 1980s!!!). its true that the stiffer you make a shaft the less torque it would inherit (so to speak) due to stiff construction however because they can control the torque separately by additional layering fibers that oriented at specific angle so that they resist twisting to various degree. its just how each company/manufacturer choose to do that is a balancing act. any company can make a very low torque shaft, there is nothing magical about it. problem with low torque designs is they either gonna be low torque and high flex in which case things like launch angle, spin rate can go up and become problematic or erratic or they can make low torque low flex design thats gonna be literally a rebar. again, its a balancing act between feel and performance aspects. not bashing this shaft in any way but you gotta understand there is no magical technology shaft out there that combines the best of everything in every design aspect.

there are different aspects of shaft feel at different stages of golf swing and it all depends on each person specific swing and the fact that some people are more sensitive to some things than others. as far as feel concerned torque would come into play at basically 3 stages. start of transition, release and impact. i think the first two are pretty obvious in terms of different feel depending on how aggressive or smooth transition is and how late or early release is. at impact what happens is when the ball is hit the torque is applied to the shaft again but this time from impact force and most people know that but another interesting thing is that it contributes alot to shaft feel too. so you basically have these 3 things in terms of feel ie how hard it is (for your swing) to torque the shaft at transition then how fast and to what degree it rebounds forward and then how much it torques at impact (more past impact or as result of impact to be more accurate). so it definitely does contribute to feel but you have other feel things going from flex to kick point to weight and how all that comes together and what it feels like. Tom Wishon mentioned old Grafalloy design as example where what they did was a flexible shaft (not a noodle but a lively shaft that would be well below its flex letter) but with very low torque of about 2 and then people perceived/felt it as stronger flex than it actually was because it felt stable so essentially what they did in terms of feel is they have masked high flex with low torque. i think what they are doing now with all those high end shafts is they try to make a very stable quick rebound shafts without sacrificing feel and all those premium materials like boron, high modulus carbon, whatever else they have is to make a mix that would be super stable and true but lively with minimum distortion where it matters at impact.

its been kinda well established before that the higher the club head speed is the lower the torque should be however all the recent research shows that the torque has very little practical effect on ball flight unless you go with extreme high torque numbers and instead of swing speed the release characteristics of a golfer is where the torque would actually matter. the current conclusion so to speak is that torque is mainly a variable related to feel rather than shot performance tho the feel is part of shot performance because if you get a feel that goes with you performance gets better. so now they are actually starting to add torque to even very stiff designs which is actually extra work for them but they have found that even people who prefer very stiff shafts actually respond better to slightly higher torque. they can actually make graphite shafts with as little as 1 degree of torque but they dont because if you make a lightweight low torque shaft like that it would have very little if any feel to it both at transition and impact. if you just accustomed to or prefer low torque feel that one thing and thats fine but if you are thinking that lowest torque shaft would automatically give you the best performance you might wanna look into it some more and maybe test on launch monitor and perhaps re-evaluate that because thats not necessarily gonna be the case.

if i'm reading the numbers right it looks to be close to 2x of maximum allowed CT but the driver can still be found conforming to CT test because CT test only tests elasticity of the face ie how "hot" the face is and the face while probably the most important one but is just a single component of it. some people who really know this stuff pointed out that CT test is ultimately flawed and can be cheated and in fact some in the industry openly confirmed that but this is still how it is tested probably because the industry has clubs to sell and you can only milk gimmicks like adjustable hosels and colors for so long. the good news is (or bad depending how you look at it) that since perfectly elastic collision between the club and the ball is impossible the industry gonna max out and hit the wall at some point anyway if not already.

guys, i wonder if this is shaft related instead like Chris said ? did you guys change from stock shaft or not ? i havent tried that shaft model so dunno anything about it. the only shimada shaft i have tried was demoing cleveland 588 while back and i totally hated the feel and i'm usually not fussy about wedge shafts as i dont believe they make that much of a difference but that shaft felt just plain off to me.

the gear effect happens because of cg depth ie cg being far enough back from the face then you would get club face rotation and ball rotation in opposite direction thus gear effect. bulge exist solely to compensate for gear effect eg on toe hits to start the ball right so that it hopefully draws back to the target and the other way around on heel hits. none of that should be happening with blade irons because cg is so shallow on them you would get a face deflection instead of rotation and it can start the ball right but it should not spin it back left. maybe on some modern hybrid like irons where cg is deep enough it could be happening to some degree but then those irons are usually very high moi designs so it might not be to a degree where it can make any practical difference dunno. most likely a feel or trigger or mental image thing for RIduffer like he said. i have never ever experienced anything like that, would just deaden the shot for me and result in distance loss, maybe push it slightly right for a very bad one. i think it should also reduce spin which would also reduce the amount of curvature but thats just a guess.

the marketing blurb is kinda funny. they call it cog point in the text section (which is what it is a point) but illustrate it as huge oval (so where is it exactly?) and then the whole toe down is kinda questionable because ok lets assume you have a significant enough toe down with your irons why not adjust your irons lie angles instead ? anyway, i think i understand what they were trying to do tho there. @RIduffer i really dont follow what you mean with intentional toe hits, you mean when chipping with your irons ? that wont make much difference. if you mean on full shots dunno why you would wanna do that because toe hits off sweetspot is more like a gamble. you would loose both distance and accuracy but i guess it works for you somehow if you do it. re Ben Hogan, actually he did something similar, not similar to this design but the goal was similar. i think it was a powerthrust model with so called underslung hosel. the idea was to point the centerline of the shaft as close as possible on cg point of the head. the guy was lightyears ahead of everybody else.

i would be surprised if they just did this for aesthetics with no consideration to cg shifting so i wouldnt worry about cg moving towards heel too much. its pretty hard to stab a good guess by just the looks alone as appearances can be deceiving but its most likely somewhere at the apex of that cut off line. hosel doesnt look long (compared to traditional blade where long hosel would contribute to heel shift most). its probably very close to the centerline on this one, could be just a bit to the heel, probably not more than other modern blades on average. it looks great tho, something original at least.

@coops supo should be sending me long hosel nike vr tour with nunchuk. hopefully i can get away from a computer and do some tests and tweaks on it at some point soon to figure out to what degree things are affected with the help from launch monitor and impact tape. i think that combo should be well suited for testing like that. i know it wont be conclusive to anyone but me, very interesting stuff nevertheless.

TM II can be had for about 10k these days especially if you want indoor version for your shop/garage. indoor and outdoor is the same device its just software licensing is different cost for indoor/outdoor. you can buy outdoor session time with indoor version when you need it.

here is another speculation for you wrt what else can be possibly affecting balance. what about cg depth on bold compared to other wedges ?

Chris, i'm speculating simply because there is something going balance wise and there is no reasonable explanation for it so far. "couple of mm" shift is not it and i believe you would agree on that. so going from that point now i'm wrong you right and its just "couple of mm" compared to everything else on average and i'm not being sarcastic or anything here. does that mean other wedges on the market all have the same vertical cg locations or they differ slightly model to model manufacturer to manufacturer, maybe on order of "couple of mm" as well ? oh wait, thats confidential and i believe you when you say they make that data confidential its just that vertical cg location on a wedge can be easily measured by anyone, its just a balancing point for f sake so i believe you that they do i just dont understand why coz its stupid thing to do. now if they differ slightly on all other wedges in "couple of mm" or so range (again, speculating here) why nobody seems to notice balance wise ?

lets just leave it at that. i cant give you more examples because i'm not gonna spend time rigging a setup for balancing heads just to prove a point and most manufacturers dont publish that kinda data but it can be easily determined on their existing product and a low tech rig so why would they want to keep vertical cg measurements confidential once the product is released is beyond me. they patent their designs anyway and i think thats what s-yard did for bold as well so that kinda data (and alot of other interesting club design related data for that matter) can sometimes be gleaned by looking at patent applications.

Chris, the reason i brought Tom Wishon into this is because he is the only expert guy who talks in gory details directly to the general public and this issue of how moving weight affects cg has been addressed by him multiple times on his own forum and elsewhere. i know this because i add alot and i mean alot of weight to my clubs and i researched this specifically to figure out what effects adding that much weight to different parts of the clubhead would have on cg position and subsequently to tangible ball flight changes if any. yes, it would depend on weight of the club itself to weight being added but Wishon specifically talked about irons and stated specific numbers for example that adding 12g weight to the hosel would move cg about 3mm towards the heel. he also stated that adding less than that has no affect to ball flight characteristics based on his experience in both robot and human testing. now if you look at the bold you are not seeing the whole picture because you only see 25g weight drilled at the bottom then added to the top. there are other methods available to raise cg higher before you start doing that. increasing the face height is one (which would obviously increase head size) and making a sole more narrow is another. to me it looks like bold has these characteristics and it also has a thicker top portion in addition to that. maybe thats comparable to most wedges on the market today in terms of cg placement within "couple of mm", maybe you are right, i dont have the data. from the figures i have seen it can be as low as 16mm and as high as 24mm. in fact if your check your own product pages for honma wedges on this site honma states 23-24mm "height to center of gravity" on their wedge models. so certainly not the highest on bold but from what i understand he didnt try to make it as high as possible with this design he just wanted it in very specific place that he believes is optimal. regardless i think if people say that the balance feels different compared to what they used to even at comparable swing and dead weight it means it shifted enough for them to notice and i believe that. in any case i wanna order one for myself now just for kicks and give it a try, see what its like.

sorry Chris but you can tell me that all you want and we can go in circles but it makes no sense to me for the reasons i have explained to you already. neither did Tario explanation on "optimal" lie angle for a driver btw. Tom Wishon (another industry veteran designer who is well respected and has some unique outstanding designs under his belt) done alot of research and experimenting in that area as well and if you are interested to understand it properly you can look into it, he quotes specific numbers and based on his figures "couple of mm" would do nothing to ball flight. so again, sorry to be a pain but i rather take it from a horse mouth directly so to speak than from someone who attended a meeting but no expert on the subject in question. just being honest with you man.

thinking about getting one just for kicks, see what its like. is there any offset on 60 ? seen the pictures but wanna check with people here who have it what do you think ? i dont mind some offset in low lofted wedges but 60 to me should either have straight no offset or maybe even a bit of onset to it. also if anybody here got one built with x100 whats the swing weight you got ?

its not "couple of mm" shift but alot more thats all i'm saying. if its "couple of mm" the whole thing would be just a gimmick as it would do exactly nada as far as hitting golf ball goes. dunno how much exactly because that would also require another wedge for exact comparison. and cg location on other wedges can be measured relatively easily with right setup and a bit of patience so it would be silly to make it confidential per se, its just nobody publishes that kinda data openly because its usually means nothing to people who buy the product and generally useless for marketing material bs.

couple of mm would do absolutely nothing, no measurable or practical effect that is. has to be at least quarter inch to make a difference. looking at the bold shape there quite a bit more meat moved to the top and on top of that (no pun) they drilled at the bottom to remove weight and put additional 25g at the top. that would be way more than than couple of mm, especially if you compare to placement in classic sole heavy wedges. whether or not different folks can feel that difference is another matter.

its not really an explanation its more like something to test and see whether there is any effect or not. wedges are the heaviest heads so shifting weight in them significantly can affect how their feel in your hands and some people are more sensitive to that sort of thing than others. if you hold it lightly in your hands and it wants to torque one way or the other enough for you to feel it i'd think you would feel a bit odd about its balance even if swing weight and dead weight are roughly the same.

i think its possible, there is lots of weight shifted up from what it looks like. you can do a quick test. take any classic wedge with the same amount of offset as bold and lay both shafts flat on the table side by side so that the heads hang toe down off the side then have a level view look facing their soles. if bold got enough weight there as it looks it does it should be way more face closed than the other wedge and if its significantly more it might explain what you perceive as awkward balance. the other thing it would do if thats the case it would try to close the face more thru impact compared to the other wedge.