Project X PXi shaft installation

Good morning,

Am looking for some opinions on this photo. Just sent my old Ping Eye2+ irons to a custom builder with a set of new PXi shafts for assembly. I wanted to give my old favorites another try mostly just for nostalgia.

I received these back yesterday just as they appear.

Most of you know, Project X. places their graphics on the shafts before shipping their product. The PXi isn't even a sticker but some type of silk screen onto the shaft itself. They cannot be relocated. I'm told by True Temper's customer service people (yes I called) that those labels are placed in a way for uniform orientation during assembly. Does that mean the same as "Pureing a shaft" I don't know. Also not sure I'm good enough to notice the difference. But I've seen hundreds of Project X shafts in iron sets and never seen anything like this.

I'm not happy with this but wanted some opinions if you guys would be fine wit this look. Am I being too picky or would you send them back. I suspect I will. Just looks terrible to me.

Thanks for any opinions.

I would “think” that there’s a reason for it, so I would ask the club builder - did he spine/Flo/Pur the shafts.

With graphics like that, it’d be obvious while installing that they are not lined up uniform, so if it’s even a decent fitter, there should be a reason for it.

I'm going to call him today and I get that but if he did, doesn't that negate what process True Temper claims they already did? Those shafts with permanent graphics are designed to go into a club in a uniform fashion.

To my knowledge no manufacturer spines a shaft for label printing. Look up a YouTube video by James Robinson on club building. He deals with a German fellow who spines two sets of true temper products and both have the logos all over the place.

I hope the builder spined the shafts otherwise he’s been drinking some of his acetone me thinks

I would NOT accept shaft installation like that. No excuse, the builder was sloppy.

UPDATE: Talked with builder. He did not Spine the shafts but says he did a FLO installation which I've read mixed reviews on. I didn't ask for that and wasn't consulted. Told him these are unacceptable. Wants me to pay extra for a re-build. I suspect our relationship has now ended and I will look elsewhere.

My OCD is going to look at those erratic labels every time I play that set. Two of my golf pro friends looked at the pics and laughed. I don't think I'm out on a limb to say this is beyond what is normally acceptable. Now the fun begins.

I’m with you there, especially since you didn’t request it. I’m dubious of all that stuff myself, so for me and tiny incremental performance gain I may have would totally be negated by my hatred for the look of the completed set.

I feel you. It's hard to find good golf club work these days.

To bad the communication between you did not clear this out before they was build.

FLO with CPM is used for flex matching of taper tip shaft, and i always did that, but those PXI prints makes them harder to work with, we dont always find the FLO lines we wants to use "labels down". They want be "aligned for labels" but if we make them "labels down" you want see the difference from address.

Its nothing wrong with this, except for the fact that the owner did not want this, so it communication between club maker and customer thats bad, NOT the job done.

Thank you Howard for the response. I get that there may be a benefit to this alignment. I'm less certain that my ability level would notice any such difference. But visually I am going to see that and it bothers me. That's on me, I understand that. My OCD gets the best of me far more than just in golf equipment. Since I did not request any Spining of FLOW and once he determined how that was going to turn out visually, I think I should have at least received a phone call and be consulted. After all, I'm the one paying and I'm the one playing those irons. I wasn't given that consideration. So they will be rebuilt.

I support your stance here, you are the customer and the one paying, so no problem with that.

I dont know how this club maker did it, some only FLO the shafts using a laser or something, but thats really useless, since all shafts has 2 sides or 2 axises where FLO is good, one of them is always stronger than the other, so advanced club makers is using this differences to get FLEX more even in the set. Even high quality steel shafts can have 3 CPM from the soft to the strong FLO line, and i know that when i say "3 CPM", im talking "Greek" for many, but if i add that soft stepping and hard stepping once moves flex by 3-4 CPM we get a better picture. By taking advantage of weak vs strong FLO lines we can "flex match" the set so we avoid "outliers" where on shaft ended up as hard stepped, and another as soft stepped within the same set.

Thats the actual benefit we can get from this, but we should as long as possible, use the FLO lines that gives a "good look" from address position and that can be done, but is silly hard on PXI due to the special decor on those.

Here is a example of a shaft set, a special one where the natural flex has a "progression" as we go shorter in the set, but if this set was just "installed" without checking CPM, we could as worse case end up with a set where the RANDOM slope all the way to the right would be what we get. If you compare that flex slope with the SUGGESTED, we talk 2 sets of shaft where one will play "as good as can be", the other will feel off to a sensible player.

Here you get to see THE SET where SLOPE simply is the progression or change from shaft to shaft. To the left ALL shafts with WEAK FLO line target line, next ALL shaft with STRONG FLO line target line, then the SUGGESTED version where we mix between weak and strong to make the slope as it should be, and the last, the worse case scenario where flex bumps up and down from shaft to shaft.

Here is the spec sheet for that set, a very expensive "Prototype" model, but even on those, flex vary depending on how we install the shafts.

So, if you club maker is using this FLO method with CPM flex matching, it was done with the very best intentions....but dont look good, on most other shaft models we dont have that label issue.