Can y'all provide a summary, even if based in opinion, of some of the major shafts out there?

For example:

Fujikura Ventus is considered the highest quality shaft and is designed for mid trajectory...

TT Dynamic Gold Tour Issue are the best iron shafts you can buy...

I'm obviously not asking for a comprehensive rundown, but maybe just the top ones for drivers and irons.

This should help narrow down the choice and why you'd choose it. However, nothing replaces getting fit on a launch monitor to understand what works best for your swing. Popular doesn't mean it's good for you, and what's good for someone else could produce less than ideal results for you.

An objective version of this list isn't possible and a subjective one is honestly pretty useless. All the major manufacturers are making high quality steel and composite shafts, there is no "best" of anything, and if you want "highest quality" then you would just look at whatever the most expensive "premium" offering is from any of the big companies.

We offer both a Launch/Spin chart and a Bend profile chart (new this year) for our product line. Hope this helps!https://fujikuragolf.com/launch-and-spin-charthttps://fujikuragolf.com/shaft-profile-guide

I have the DG in my wedges but I think the best iron shaft I’ve ever played (2-iron through 9-iron) is the Z-Z65.

A good starting point is to find out your clubhead speed for (1) Driver, and (2) 6i. Each model has rough recommendations for shaft weight and flex relating to this.

For weight, you want enough weight you can feel the club at the top of the swing, but not so much weight you struggle to control it. (Excess weight also slows swing speed).

Then, determine your release profile from top. If you are quick from the top, you likely would want a stiffer shaft than someone who is smoother from the top.

And, this is just for shafts. How the shaft performs is related to (1) your swing, and (2) the clubhead on the end of the shaft.

One tool that many fitters like is the Mizuno Shaft Optimizer. The fitter will have you hit some shots with this sensor-rich club attachment, and the optimizer will deliver a short list of shafts that fit your swing profile.

Originated in 2010, the Optimizer is now on version 3D.

As others have said, you want to find shafts that are the best for you, not for some tour pro who hits his driver 340 yards.

Thanks for the help and information.

I'm not actually looking to get new shafts, it's more of a question on getting my baseline up to speed. I'm a gear geek and like knowing what I'm getting with different manufacturers.

I've played drums all my life, so I can tell you the general differences and reputations between Yamaha, DW, Tama, Pearl, and the little guys. I can tell you the differences and traits of a Zildjian ride vs. a Paiste ride. Hell, I can even tell you the difference b/t various pedals and sticks.

Of course you need to pick the kit that sounds best to you and the type of music you play. And you'll pick heads and tune them to what you want - but I can still tell you that a Yamaha Absolute Hybrid Maple is a better constructed, warmer, richer, and more resonant kit than a Pearl Export kit (one of the most popular kits in history).

I just don't know a Tensei from a KBS and want to have a little more knowledge on the topic.

fertile ground here, keep reading and searching through past threads...

Tom Wishon had a great article about shafts long ago.http://www.golfwrx.com/6419/tom-wishon-talking-to-wrx-readers-10-myths-about-shafts-factual-info-about-shafts-to-help-you-all/

If you want the short version of the drum analogy, the vast majority of golfers will be tone def to the possible variations in that type quality in the shaft - and will stay that way no matter how good they think they are. That is assuming you get a shaft that's at least a halfway decent fit for your swing. Selecting a shaft and the performance you get out of it is really 100% subjective as to how good the stiffness profile design and weight works for you and your swing mechanics.

As others have said, that concept of 'better' just doesn't apply when it comes to shaft selection. A golf shaft isn't really that complex of a thing. It's a tapered tube that's designed to have a variable stiffness along it's length. That stiffness profile over the length is what makes the shaft what it is. It's also, along with the weight, what makes a shaft a good fit for a particular player or not. There are no good or bad profiles or there really is nothing in that profile that makes it a high or low quality product.

In the context of quality, the only two factors that come into play is 1) the consistency of the stiffness profile from shaft to shaft that comes out of the factory. and 2) amount of asymmetry in the stiffness profile.

In both cases, neither have any negative effect as long as the variations are less than the players ability to detect changes in stiffness. If you can't feel it, it just doesn't play any part in the ball flight results so is really meaningless in terms of quality. The variations in any above average players swing are going to be much bigger and the shaft variation gets lost in the noise. And modern manufacturing techniques have improved quite a bit to reduce those variations in the shaft manufacturing process. 20 years ago it might have been a bigger issue in some shafts (although which shafts had little to do with price or cost). That doesn't mean it can't still be an issue, just that it is not very common. The fact that, for wood shafts, players almost never play more than 1 or 2 of the same exact model and weight makes the potential of identifying those variations much less. For iron shaft matching it could potentially be an issue, but with the shorter length and stiffer profiles, variations in the shaft are going to be less noticeable for most.

Secondly, you're not going to find any good data on those quality related characteristics even if you look for it. Unfortunately, no one really has gone out and done any extensive public testing of those properties, at least not in a while. (Tom Wishon did some sampling when he was collecting data for his shaft profile fitting software. But even then he wouldn't name any names, so to speak. Only tell us things like the amount of consistency he found had no correlation to the cost of the shaft.) The cost would just be too high to have to purchase enough shafts of each model, weight, and flex to get any kind of signifcant statistical sampling. And the shaft OEM's aren't going to give away shafts to an effort that could potentially be damaging to their reputation. Especially for information they already know from their internal QA efforts. So the only thing you'll find here is a lot of different opinions that isn't really based on factual data. e.g. the people that think cost equals quality or confuse a shaft that happens to be a good fit for them to mean it's a high quality shaft. Or a builder that might work with only a small sample compared to what might be needed to get more accurate results.

I agree with what Stuart said above, and as a musician I can both relate to what you're looking for and can expand upon it.

First off, there will be far FAR more nuance in the construction of drum shells, cymbals, and pedals than there will be in golf shafts, specifically when it comes to steel, so your years of knowledge and ear training won't be as applicable here. Steel golf shafts can and should be considered directly analogous in almost every way to drum sticks. You are looking for weight, balance, and feel, and concerns about construction or materials are largely meaningless, hence why there is no real objective way of qualifying them. One person will want heavy marching sticks, another something much slimmer and lighter, and neither person is "wrong" or using a superior or inferior product. The reason there is so much marketing fluff around golf equipment is that there is objectively far LESS difference between products as there would be/is in the drum/musical equipment world, hence the need for marketing to try to convince you otherwise.

Now when it comes to composite shafts, this is a little more nuanced. You can liken composite shaft construction to drum shell construction, but the differences are not going to be nearly as obvious. Maple vs. Walnut vs. Bubinga vs. Birch vs. Brass vs. Nickel in their various numbers of plys/thicknesses/layouts can be considered similar to the way composite shafts are designed and built with their varying materials and the cost of them, but again the actual result of those differences is much much smaller. Anyone can hear the difference between a snare that is constructed from different materials, tuned differently, or is deeper/shallower etc etc, but as Stuart said, most people won't really care or know what the differences are or why they exist. The same is very much true for composite shafts but to an even greater degree. As an example, by old boss that I occasionally golfed with could not tell the differences between his stock Taylormade regular flex driver shaft and the Diamana Ahina 80x I had in mine at the time, despite the fact that the differences between them could not be any more extreme. Composite shafts are again much more like drum sticks in this way, but with a bit more nuance than with steel. But those nuances will only matter to the extent that the player can detect them, and that normally requires a high level of skill and very consistent and mechanically sound swing. You could setup a ridiculously smooth and sensitive double kick layout that is perfect for a certain type of more speed oriented player, and everything about the nuance of that setup would be completely lost on a beginner, or even just a solid simple single kick classic rock drummer.

So in all these ways, it is far more about context than objective "better or worse" and the years that have gone in to the senses you have developed around drums can not be directly applied to golf equipment in the ways you are looking for. However, there are certain "reputations" that different manufacturers have around feel, and I can lay some of those out for you if you're interested.

You two deserve a beer or two for taking the time to help a noob like this.

I don't think he meant that in a negative way, hah.

I get where you're coming from, I remember asking the same thing about cars back when I got my first one as a teenager because even then I was already used to the "Budget/Premium" mindset of the musical instrument world.

There are indeed budget/premium ranges in the golf shaft world, particularly in composite shafts, but the same pitfalls do not exist. Budget guitars will often have inferior hardware, electronics, and woodwork which end up costing you down the road when something fails or when setups become a frequent need due to something like neck instability or poor fretwork, but "budget" golf shafts will function just fine, ESPECIALLY since the golf equipment world is built around a lot of fake obsolescence. Premium shafts from 10+ years ago are still very high quality products and can often be had for pennies on the dollar compared to new stuff. The same goes for many areas of golf equipment, irons and wedges specifically, only driver and fairway wood tech making any real game changing progress in the last 6-7 years or so.

Exactly as most said, there isn't a "best" or "highest quality" its highly subjective to the player. If you're looking for most common on tour, or most common in general, then that would be a different answer. But none of them wether on tour or not are considered best quality ect.

If you want most common iron shaft on tour, I would say TT DG X100 tour issue (Tiger for one, and many others) , but thats just a guess, as I honestly don't know if it takes the top spot. A lot of top players use Project X (Rory, Rahm, Speith, and more). But again (meant in a nice way) youre not them, and theyre not you. So kinda irrelevant what they play.

Most popular would be TT DG, Project X, KBS Ctaper, Nippon Modus.

Driver shafts run the full spectrum with a large variance of different combos, would be hard to narrow down the most popular.

In terms of quality in a graphite shaft, there will be different levels of graphite/carbon fiber, some "superior" to others in terms of strength and in terms of consistency, some are hand crafted, they have different bend profiles and launch characteristics to fit different players.

Im sure a lot of manufacturers would argue different but they all have premium offerings that are more expensive, due to the materials and being hand made or not. Wether some could tell the difference maybe, maybe not. Same with steel iron shafts, some have steps, some are rifle style shafts with no steps, some have different tapering, is one better? Maybe maybe not. All depends on what you're after. Many of the brands in steel and graphite have a cheap line, mid line, and expensive or exotic line. Many have "made for" lines to sell more shafts. In your example of Ventus per say, there is a "ventus made for" version with out velocore, many would argue its not a Ventus at all, and its just got a Ventus paint job, but you can buy one of those for around 60-80.00 on the used market, but the real ventus was around 400.00 new, and not sure right now, but probably 200-275.00 on the used market. To add more confusion, there are several different Ventus shafts. All different weights, and all different bend profiles to be low launch, mid launch, high launch, low, mid, high spin, low, mid, heavy weight.

To use the drum analogy, if one is built with better quality but just cant stay tuned, or the sound is off, or doesn't fit the type of music youre playing, then it doesn't matter the quality, just like a shaft, it could be the most expensive highest quality shaft out there, if you cant keep the ball on the planet using it, it doesn't matter. And the opposite is true with "cheaper inferior" brands or models.

'twasn't my intention to rip or "flex" on you, sorry you took it that way. You were fortunate to have two very knowledgeable guys give detailed answers to a good question. Peace out.

That was how I read it as well, no worries. And thank you for the compliment! I'll take a standard Sierra Nevada Pale Ale please.

Both Stuart and Valtiel has done a good job here, but let me add a few words.

Shafts is really about "good or bad fit" for each player, and thats not brand or price related, its about weight, profiles and feel, and what fits the players swing.

Production quality is about "tolerances", both on the profile itself, but also weight, balance point and how good the tip section is centered vs the rest of the shaft.

Again, its not really brand or price tag related, and we need a silly large amount of shafts measured on all specs to be able to judge if "A" is any better than "B", and i never saw any brands thats was without "flyers" or shafts thats was more off specs than we should accept, but since the majority of Golfers aint even fitted to play the shaft model and flex they play, they will never notice or know if the shaft they play came out with larger tolerances for flex, profile, balance point or weight, than it should have been. If the shaft tip is badly centered, it will for most be visible.

Club makers who cares, knows the specs on their fitting cart shafts, and measure each shafts in stock so we know that we deliver a shaft with specs as close to the shaft used during fitting as possible. The typical "quality control" done here is to check uncut weight and cut weight, we check butt CPM on weak and strong FLO lines (to check for asymmetrical flex depending on install), and we simply "roll" the shaft on the table to see if the shaft tip is centered or "wobbles" vs the rest of the shaft. If the shaft passes all this tests, we say its good to go, we cant do much more, but if its a VERY sensitive player, we must check frequency with max 5" inch between clamping points, and i did that but no longer down than a minimum beam of 16" (tip side), since its silly hard to measure the rest of the tip section correct without the risk of a damage to the shaft. (ive broken way to many shafts when testing flex with a shorter beam than 16")

Most club makers dont check any of this, they just cut, SW match and go, and they dont know actual specs on the shafts in their fitting cart, so there is a risk at this places (and from OEMs), that the shaft we get delivered is quite a bit off on specs vs the shafts used during fitting, and a full flex is not unusual, and sometimes OEMs mess up to, like picking the wrong flex, or soft or hard step shafts when that was not on the order.

If you are very picky, and demand "the best", again its NOT about brands, but the place you get a fitting done and their knowledge, and where your clubs will be assembled, and what quality control they have.

The only really BAD shafts ive seen, is "budged brand shafts" where a full bag with heads and grips cost 150-250 USD including a golf bag, then you can expect "tolerances" to be all over the place for the shafts, but if you stick to known trademarks for shafts and heads, you will in most cases be just fine, as long as the shaft weight, profile and flex fits you.

I think the OP asked a good question, way to often we see players buying the same brand in everything like it was cars, where only "BMW or Mercedes" is good enough, but this aint about that at all, but good or bad fit, so to be brand agnostic is a better approach here, find what works for you in each club

My gamer bag has heads from Tom Wishon, Krank, Swing Science, Callaway, Scratch and Mitchell, shafts is Grafalloy, Project X, Swing Science, True Temper and UST, grips is Golfpride, Lamkin and Super Stroke.

Thank you, Howard. A couple of things were interesting to hear:

That there is such as thing as a bad/questionable shaft - that complete set on amazon for $199 might not have shafts that are good, regardless of fitting one's swingThat it's better to be brand agnostic - I feel like I see a lot of devotees to certain brands of shafts, and I took that to mean that the quality was superior or that it's the most consistent throughout all the clubs the player is using. I guess it can and should vary - from Diamana to Tensei, from TT to KBS...

1) I mostly worked with "better players", but it happened that they brought a relative to have something fixed, and the worse example of shafts i ever saw was a "Ladies set" of "BEAST Graphite" who was suppose to fit a woman, but shaft weight alone was crazy and the most heavy graphite shafts i ever saw with a weight equal to DG S400, and flex about the same, so they was anything but what we should expect from a set marked "Ladies"....(but the name was BEAST,,maybe that was a warning or indicator of what to expect?):-))). counterfeit products also exist in golf clubs, both shafts, heads and grips, so if the price tag is "too good to be true", it most likely is too good to be true. When i was all new to golf, i knew nothing about equipment, and bought a "Callaway FTi" driver from the bay, brand new to a bargain price. The club i got looked like the original, but sounded like a empty beer can, and the shaft was most likely from a Chinese factory for low prices fishing rods. i later bite the bullet and bought the original in the local store and was very happy for it, so be aware of counterfeit products....

2.) If the PROFILE fits the player, later versions is almost the same with small varieties only, so they are often "fully compatible" several generations forward, and thats why we often see players who stick to the same brand for drivers and woods, they dont want to change the over all profile or feel, so "the latest model" who belongs to the series they play is often the safe choice IF its a "upgraded version" only.