ant

yeah i think with a driver it just wont stay on the face long enough and the ball doesnt get compressed as hard (less deformation for ball more deformation for face/head compared to an iron). maybe a cluster of dots in some tight pattern instead of a line would work better for this dunno. i'm gonna get an older long hosel tour head, bend it real flat taking my 3w lie angle as point of reference because it just happens to work perfect for me and experiment with this as well and see if maybe i can make some sense of it then, at least for myself.

@coops the one i have tried no idea how long it was exactly. the guy had it with some old tm head like the one that looks like it has space ship engine nozzles on the sole. didnt feel longer than my ~44,5 (i think) but i cant be sure since it was awhile back. @vegaman here is Jamie Sadlowski on a decent camera just pre impact. if someone can cause a massive shaft droop that would be him. plays his at ~48 and even tho its marked filthy xxx that house of forged shaft is not a telegraph pole believe it or not. this is all very approximate but where is the massive shaft droop at longer length ?! cut it to 44-45 range and it would be even less.

@vegaman i read that stuff from Wishon while back. problem is he doesnt go into enough detail or share any numbers which is what i'm after. they do iron byron like testing that should produce specific swing neutral numbers then those numbers can be further spread by real player testing. maybe i should just go try and ask him directly or his club making forum or over at wrx. @coops i did try nunchuk and totally hated how it feels. its not a hook proof shaft no shaft can do that. for me it would actually be worse because my worst shot would be a real low snap hook. tried it briefly at the range so kinda hard to tell with crappy range balls in terms of exact ball flight but i could hook it just the same. i'm used to heavy shafts, my 3w shaft is ~105g, so thats not a problem. plus like you and another member here mentioned reduced droop would keep it more upright. btw did you do that little test with marker/tape that you have mentioned earlier ? i'm curious what kinda results you got.

very much so but not until i can figure out this stuff. i really like what you have shared on his designs wrt cg placements in his driver and wedge designs and it makes alot of sense to me but this lie angle stuff just doesnt (to me). i was also looking at mp 611 per suggestions of coops and vegaman and i like that they can do 56 degrees and the hosel looks like it can allow further bending too. any chance mizuno will be doing the same kinda custom thing with drivers like they do with yoro irons i read about in your posts, maybe do factory bending even further and open the face some for custom order ? right now i plan on buying a long hosel tour head and experimenting with it to figure this out.

or just make a baby or two and oiling your clubs would be the last thing you would have time for ;)

many videos are done with cameras suffering from the rolling shutter like distortion effects that i have mentioned. there are few real high quality videos available that show true shaft bend thruout the swing. most stuff you see on youtube is distorted and cant be trusted. the cameras that dont distort are very expensive scientific or military grade gear. even expensive high quality digital cameras such as RED produce distorted results at very high speeds.

Tario, please do. i know it can be a bit of pain to ask these kinda questions because it quickly starts to sound like armchair 'club designer' questioning industry veteran real designer but since you got direct access to the guy there is much to learn and i hope that he can sense and understand where its coming from. personally i disagree that flatter lies are only for pros and masses should stick to 60 or so standard. i'm just a hack but just happen to have a much flatter entry and battle a hook constantly and pretty much hate hitting my driver because of that, especially when in play where there is no place to fit a hook or draw safely. it sure can be rectified with swing changes but i found that my persimmon drivers are much easier to fade than anything modern that i have tried even stuff with movable weights and all those gimmicks. that might have to do with persimmon face roll or flatter lie or both dunno but it is what it is and i'm just trying to figure out wrt modern drivers what affects what and how much to understand all of this better and give me some ideas of what to look for in a modern driver plus i'm genuinely interested in club design.

thats the thing coops, i just find it hard to believe that modern premium graphite shafts are that bad when it comes to droop. its very difficult to tell how much droop there really is by looking at videos but all the quality high speed camera footage that does not have rolling shutter distortion shows very little droop for tour players and even long drive hitters. if i had to guess i would say its about 2 degrees, maybe 4 degrees max and 2 degrees shaft droop just cannot justify 60 degree lie angle. originally when graphite just started to make it to drivers they had to deal with whippy shafts and then shaft length went longer so whippy+longer=more droop so they might have had to deal with 8-10 degrees droop maybe dunno just speculating. so they started jacking up lie angle to compensate and now ended up with new standard. meantime shafts got much better, you see steel like torque numbers and its actually possible to make them tougher than steel with modern materials and manufacturing so theoretically you can have a graphite shaft at longer length with very little droop so droop becomes non issue they were trying to solve with more upright lie angles.

if you gonna oil them (personally i would only consider doing this for a very rare collectible set) be careful with so called sword oils you never know what you gonna get because original/traditional Japanese sword oil is some sort of plant based oil similar to cooking oil and is actually not the best thing and can cause rust and tends to be overpriced as well. its better than nothing i suppose and some die hard traditionalist sword enthusiasts or those who dont know better still use it for oiling their nihonto blades. just use standard non synthetic machine oil but make sure them blades are clean and completely dry before applying it otherwise it can actually trap moisture and make things worse. for swords they sell special powder (cant recall what its based on) that you put on a blade to suck any remaining moisture and then wipe with paper or cloth before applying oil i guess you can use the same for clubs.

thanx Chris! been away for a little while. if i only had one quick question to ask i would ask this how many degrees of shaft droop on average they design their driver heads for ? granted different shafts plus different shaft lengths and different swing types would produce different droop angles but they must have some testing data at least for their stock shafts (like Mr K picking specific stock shaft for 388 being one example) that can show at least a spread of min/max kinda numbers. there is no need to name names or go on record for any of them if that info is sensitive or confidential, like head A / shaft B would suffice. if you can get such numbers it would sure help alot to understand this issue.

or maybe he has learned over the years to swing more and more upright to accommodate upright lie angles ? if you want flat fws get an older rc pro tp. those heads have long hosels, mine is bent 6 flat from whatever the standard on it was (cant remember) and it works great for me. they are not forgiving but on par distance wise with some newer stuff. tried that marketing inflated rbz while back and it didnt do anything for me distance wise compared to my old rc. rc has incorrect lofts for them tho, mine is labeled 15 but is actually 14, maybe its just the one i got tho. i think you can still get them from tsg.

Tario, the image isnt actually accurate, you should have drawn it from different perspective to illustrate that point in your original post, more from the top front view (slightly left of the face to provide proper perspective) rather than from face on view then it would make sense to me but in any case all the lines and description there, aside from the shaft centerline in red and imaginary shaft centerline in green, should be disregarded in the context of what i was trying to explain in my post. like yourself i used that image purely to illustrate my point and its by no means precise or realistic. green line i have drawn there if realized that way would be so flat it would make a golfer hit from their knees or something, again, its just an illustration. i'm not implying that Mr K doesnt perform proper testing or calculations, it was my attempt at humor (failed again) to highlight that there must be some testing data otherwise on which specific design decisions were based. i was hoping Mr K could be asked to spare a few minutes to make an in-depth comments explaining the issues discussed here based on his knowledge in design and test data which i think would be very educational for people genuinely interested in club design. 56 is becoming ultra rare by not only jdm standards but its practically the same story with every manufacturer globally big or small. 58 is considered flat these days and its getting harder and harder to find either flat head by design or a head with adjustable hosel long enough to allow for safe 4-6 degree bending.

@coops thanx, this is exactly what i'm talking about here! i can get the numbers for any driver swing with simulation software and they would be pretty spot on both in initial direction and curvature due to spin axis tilt. the problem is i do not know what initial numbers to punch in to simulate how much off target it would go. its the same about that guy post on sandtrap, hes making a guess on specific shaft droop in degrees. without knowing that it cannot be accessed correctly as there sure to be quite a bit of a difference between say something as little as 2 degrees and something like 8 degrees or maybe even more. so if Mr K designs his head (or other designer for that matter as ~60 degrees seems like industry wide standard these days and certainly not something unique to his designs) and then picks a stock shaft for it based on various criteria how much shaft droop is he factoring in ? i'm sure they do some sort of testing and have numbers at least for their stock shafts or at least have some testing data from their shaft manufacturer so they can maybe calculate based on that, right, i mean its not like he goes to the range like in that video, hits it a few times and then goes oh well it looks about right lets go with that.

@coops thats one of the things i'm trying to understand with my questions here. some say the effect is negligible for a driver and should not be a concern, others say if you suffering a hook it is something to be concerned with. there is alot of hearsay and marketing bs about this but nobody ever talks about this in-depth to address these issues properly.

Tario, i simply like to understand how that works because no one ever talks about this (apart from marketing material bs that is) and it still doesnt make sense to me. this is no argument of a hack like me with an industry veteran designer, there couldnt be any. i just like to get an in-depth answer from a guy like him, not just a few lines dumb down for marketing material and such. lie angle does affect face orientation and toe up would also mean face slightly left. take your lob wedge and put it severely toe up at address and see where its face points after that. far less effect for a driver because of its low loft. does it matter for a driver ? if not why there used to be bendable hosels not that long ago and why heads with adjustable hosels are still available on tour today ? does it affect the ball flight or tour players need this solely for address look and feel adjustment ? shaft droop and CG placement and upright lie still doesnt make sense to me. i know that shaft droop is affected by 2 things. 1 is the steeper a player is thru impact the more shaft droop there will be. and 2 the farther CG of the club head is from the shaft center line the more shaft droop there will be. the former cannot be controlled by club designed because everyone swings different but the later can be controlled with club head design. it is established thru physics that the club head CG thru release would try to align with the centerline of the shaft in a straight line. the more off the centerline that CG is located the more possible shaft droop there will be. possible because it can be countered with stiffer shafts, specifically tip stiffer shafts but thats the idea. now lets take Mr K latest head design and the picture you posted on another thread green line added there by me to illustrate centerline of the shaft at much flatter lie angle (its very flat but lets just stick with it as shows the point i'm trying to make). so if the forces acting on the club make CG try to align itself with the centerline of the shaft in a straight line which lie angle would then give you the least shaft droop and thus truest possible face orientation in this picture ? of course since we are looking at this in 2D thats not entirely accurate and we just looking at vertical CG placement. horizontal CG placement would also play a huge role in this but for this design it is said to be moved more forward towards the face. this in contrast to older frying pan designs that had CG more backward and thus more potential for shaft droop because of that. it seems to me that more upright lie angle in this case would actually induce more shaft droop not less and if we take a more realistic flatter shaft centerline because of CG placement there wont be a need to compensate that much for shaft droop with such an upright lie angle.

@Vega very few players return their hands at exact same spot or below. one example from modern players would be Sergio but thats not what i'm talking about. you are tall fellow Vega iirc so that means you are most likely to be more upright as those things also depend on height, arm length, posture as well as swing dynamics as you mention but thats not relevant because some people would be flatter than others and the other way around due to all these factors. i just used Mr K snapshots to illustrate. i dont wanna turn this into swing discussion, not interested in that here, there are plenty of that written (and probably still being written as we speak) elsewhere on the net. if your point is that its just a number that works ok on average for majority of golfers then its duly noted.

Thanx Tario, appreciate the answer and the fact that you actually did ask him that! The problem is its still not clear to me how is that supposed to work in terms of flat head at impact (no toe up or toe down that is), the part about squaring the club face i understand. there is practically no shaft droop issue here. couple of snapshots to illustrate from that video of Mr K hitting T388 at address and at impact. its not the best camera for that sorta thing but the angle is alright and you can clearly see how much more vertical his hands go at impact compared to address while shaft droop is almost nonexistent. i'm not judging his swing here by any means, just to illustrate the point. so what would happen with somebody who has a flatter entry into impact ? whats gonna happen to the club face orientation ? will it point slightly left in this case because lie angle is too upright for that and there is almost no shaft droop to flatten it ?

i realize that there is probably no way the man reads this but hoping that maybe someone from TSG staff by chance can get an answer from him directly. the question is "why lie angles on his driver head designs are so upright ?". this goes for his last 3 designs known to me such as zero (60), T388 (60) and XV (61). the reason being cited for this most by club designers is the shaft droop that flattens the angle at impact. the very old standard was ~50 degrees then it went up to ~55 degrees and now modern standard is ~60 degrees. now i do understand that shafts got longer and very stiff steel shafts were replaced by unstable in early days graphite and bigger frying pan heads that had CG moved too deep in the back and all these factors contributed to various degree to increased shaft droop. however these days shafts, especially premium ones got extremely stable even at longer length and judging by the footage i have seen taken with professional slow motion cameras of tour players or long drive hitters who play extra stiff shafts and apply the most humanly possible forces on them the shaft droop isnt that much of an issue as it perhaps used to be a while back. another reason being cited is more upright lie angle helps a slicer with higher rate of closure thru impact but i do not believe it was one of design goals for either zero or T388 because T388 description says, quote "The shorter center of gravity allows the head to rotate naturally for a square impact. This is unlike many drivers on the market today which have long and huge gravity angles which force the head to rotate very quickly causing better players to over rotate the head." end quote. cant dig out zero description but i'm sure its roughly the same. so thats clearly not the reason. this is a bit long winded but something prompted me to write this open question because i really wanna understand the reasoning behind such design choice. that something was this picture of Mr. Kobayashi checking out new driver mold at address, see below toe up at address. for comparison note another one behind him positioned flat on the floor. many tour players now go toe up at address and quite a few play open face heads. one of the reasons an open face head would be desirable is because when you go toe up that closes the face and you counter that with slightly open face. not by much with a low lofted head but enough to make a difference on long drive. would that be really necessary with a flatter lie angle ? anyway, i dont think there is much chance of getting an in-depth answer from the man directly but maybe if other folks here have interest in this then maybe there is a bigger chance with TSG staff help to get an answer.

Wishon made a 480cc 0.90 COR head while back for Asian market (for comparison thats a higher COR than Ryoma special tuning). launch conditions have far more effect on distance than small COR improvements so theoretically the only gains you start to see from cheating COR is when your launch conditions are dialed in and then higher COR would give you some extra over that. which seems to be backed by most of the anecdotal evidence from the net where people say higher COR did nothing for them. POW! :)

they should bring a similar sole grind to their blades.

go for it Vega! if it kicks your 611 i might take that 611 off your hands then. any idea on exact weight and face angle (if i understand correctly it was possible to get slightly different face angles and slightly different head weights) ?

450cc. pdf with all the details on XV line got posted on another thread. no nice pictures there tho, looks like all renders.

enjoy reading reviews/feedback here. i think some people might get bored because frankly jdm clubs in general are solid, quality products. like when was the last time someone posted here saying something like 'got this jdm club and its horrible, freaking hate it', right ?! and again, frankly even off the shelf non jdm clubs got much better in recent years. so then it becomes more like this works better for my game than that kinda thing and it helps when people go into more detail of what exactly works for them and why. reviews like 'got this driver and its the longest and straightest and best feeling driver i ever hit in my life; update: still hitting it long and straight and wet my pants from impact feel' are boring for sure, who cares. more to the topic it looks like grind studio can actually grind anything as long as you can draw it for them properly. they have a form on their website which looks like you can draw exactly what you want and they can do it for you in terms of grind. doesnt look like they offer different model heads tho so just the grind but thats freaking amazing, like tour van service. anybody here tried that ? how did it work out for you ? is it stupidly expensive or what they ask is reasonable ?

yeah well just for the record i dont give a flying monkey who runs their facebook page per se be it their own, tsg or some side pr agency. thought they did and just trying to bump Tario for more info based on that because iron design similar to bold concepts as mentioned by op would be interesting to see unless the designer guy gonna have to butcher it with offset as he did with personals to cater for what the market demands these days. i didnt get bold because i'm looking for 60 now and the grind and bounce of bold 60 didnt look like it would suit my needs and grind in a wedge is most important thing to me but i did like the concepts, at least on paper made sense to me, especially with modern ball. iron set should be next logical step.

there is no such thing as loading properly at any swing speed, its not a bow that loads then slings clubhead for you, all that stuff is baloney. the reason manufacturers state suggested swing speeds for specific flexes is simply a guideline for shaft recoil at late release to account for how much droop and twist gonna be involved because it has direct effect on what happens to club face thru impact, again for late release. it has nothing to do with loading anything and is no indication of how its gonna feel for you personally. dont be afraid of stiff flexes, especially at 110mph clubhead speed, you can go filthy x and if the shaft feels right for you its gonna perform no matter what flex label it has.