Dynamic/Dynamic Gold shafts

birly-shirly · August 19, 2015

Am I reading this right? http://www.golfshaftreviews.info/index.php/dynamic-gold-golf-club-shaft-review/

This seems to me to be saying that Dynamic and Dynamic Gold shafts are fundamentally the same piece of metal, and that the difference in flexes comes down to the respective lengths of the tip section and butt section. (I know that's a slight simplification, in that at least the taper tip iron shafts, the S and X flex shafts have an extra step and a wider butt section, so they're not absolutely identical.)

And if that's right, then it would seem that you could identify the "true" flex of any Dynamic shaft by ignoring whatever the label says and just measuring the distance to the first step, and comparing it to TT's published specifications and tip-trimming recommendations. [Yes, I realise that it's probably easier to read the label.]

However, the reason for asking is that if all the above is correct, then I have sets of clubs that are all over the shop. I have a set of MacGregors labelled stiff, but hardstepped an inch to be halfway between S and X. I also have a set of Wilsons which are even further adrift from their labelled flex, again on the X side of S.

I have a set of MacGregor persimmons labelled R which may actually be S, at least in the 1 and 3 whilst the 5 has a longer tip

And to cap it all, I have a Titleist 975F with the original factory R300 shaft, but the tip to first step distance is 7.75", which by my reckoning makes it almost an X flex.

Lastly, I've heard talk that older Dynamic shafts played stiffer and may have had different tip specifications/trimming instructions - though I have not seen anything definitive.

NRJyzr · August 19, 2015

Time to get my geek on :)

First off, I have been one of those who mentioned the different trimming instructions. I used "archived shaft data" from Dynacraft's (now Hireko) DSFI. These show the change occurred in 1996, and the result was a softening of the flexes approximately 5 cpm (possibly less in R, but I'm counting that as slop). Which is a half flex, if you like 10 cpm per flex. I'll add a screen image of the page in DSFI where I'm seeing this:

I admit it's supposition, but it's my belief the Dynamic/Dynamic Gold shaft was softened in the 90s for both woods AND irons. About 1" extra tip section left in the clubs, extrapolating from the above pic of DSFI.

This would account for your MacGregors, which I'm assuming are on the classic end of the spectrum, with Dynamic Stiff, but with tip lengths that appear to be between S and X. I should check my own set of Muirfields, Dynamic S.

Which reminds me, I have a set of 78 Staffs. At least one of the shafts has the black ring at the bottom of the first step, indicating Regular. However, as I remember checking them, some of them appear to be shorter than modern DGR flex tip lengths. I should recheck these, also.

And if that's right, then it would seem that you could identify the "true" flex of any Dynamic shaft by ignoring whatever the label says and just measuring the distance to the first step, and comparing it to TT's published specifications and tip-trimming recommendations.

Indeed you can. You can determine what flex your Dynamic shafts would be in the modern DG world by doing what you describe.

I might have to head to the garage with my ruler.... :)

NRJyzr · August 19, 2015

Forgot to mention something else...

In the past, Dynamic and Dynamic Gold regular flex was a .580" butt section, while stiff and Xstiff were .600". I'm not sure when it changed to .600 across the board.

Also, in the past, Dynamic regular flex was sometimes referred to as T flex. Not sure what it meant, but if you see Dynamic T, it's regular.

BS, I also forgot to address your 975F...

There is a 2" difference in tip section between DGR/DGS/DGX as a wood shaft. Using a club I've installed and tip trimmed myself, DGX is something between 8" and 8½" in its uncut state; DGS would be 10-something inches, DGR would be 12-something. (having trouble tracking down any published tip lengths) I remember the fractional portion being around a quarter inch, or even an eighth of an inch, but I'm relying on memory for that. You know where that gets us. LOL

The classic tipping instructions for DG shafts in woods was 1" for standard bore installation, and ½" for blind bore installs. You then tip trimmed the club another inch for a 3 wood, and 2" extra for a 5 wood.

So, a DG 3 wood shaft would have about 6" tip section at X flex, 8" for stiff, and 10" for regular.

If the shaft was done using the old trimming instructions, I suspect the tip would be an inch shorter yet.

Now the added fun.... if someone trimmed the shaft using a frequency analyzer, meaning they were performing REAL clubmaking procedures instead of standard cut and glue, all bets are off. You can get an idea from the amount of tip section left, but only an idea; the actual frequency would determine the flex.

I know, it's not much of an answer, but depending on the age of your club, and which wood it is, it sounds like it could be reasonably close to stiff?

Assuming it wasn't a several cpms weak R flex that was tipped extra to get to R, of course.

BIG STU · August 19, 2015

Time to get my geek on :)

First off, I have been one of those who mentioned the different trimming instructions. I used "archived shaft data" from Dynacraft's (now Hireko) DSFI. These show the change occurred in 1996, and the result was a softening of the flexes approximately 5 cpm (possibly less in R, but I'm counting that as slop). Which is a half flex, if you like 10 cpm per flex. I'll add a screen image of the page in DSFI where I'm seeing this:

I admit it's supposition, but it's my belief the Dynamic/Dynamic Gold shaft was softened in the 90s for both woods AND irons. About 1" extra tip section left in the clubs, extrapolating from the above pic of DSFI.

This would account for your MacGregors, which I'm assuming are on the classic end of the spectrum, with Dynamic Stiff, but with tip lengths that appear to be between S and X. I should check my own set of Muirfields, Dynamic S.

Which reminds me, I have a set of 78 Staffs. At least one of the shafts has the black ring at the bottom of the first step, indicating Regular. However, as I remember checking them, some of them appear to be shorter than modern DGR flex tip lengths. I should recheck these, also.

And if that's right, then it would seem that you could identify the "true" flex of any Dynamic shaft by ignoring whatever the label says and just measuring the distance to the first step, and comparing it to TT's published specifications and tip-trimming recommendations.

Indeed you can. You can determine what flex your Dynamic shafts would be in the modern DG world by doing what you describe.

I might have to head to the garage with my ruler.... :)

I have a set of 78 Staff Tour Blades I got new around 77-78 never could hit them consistant. They have spent most of their life in the closet. A few years ago when I was learning to use my friend's frequency machine I checked them. Now At that time I was still learning and I had him check them behind me because I was getting some unreal numbers and thought maybe I was loony. He checked them and asked me "what did you do those things?" Nothing I told him they have never been touched except the grips a few years back when once again I tried to hit them. That has always been one screwed up set of irons

NRJyzr · August 19, 2015

Stu, I did briefly check my 78 Staffs. It seems I have a mismatched set.

There are a couple black ring shafts. The 1 iron is a red ring. When I remember checking the tip lengths a year or more ago, they didn't progress evenly. The club lengths are different, also, for some of the clubs.

Oh, and tip lengths... the 3 and 4 irons, such as I remember, appeared to have tip lengths putting them between flexes. I may look closer, but I'm not sure it's necessary; any possible use of these clubs requires a total reshaft job.

I also checked tip lengths of a couple of my Muirfield irons. They appeared to be in line with current DGS tip lengths. Go figure.

Bella Woods · August 19, 2015

True Temper will tell you the Dynamic and Dynamic Gold are the same material/shaft,
I have no reason to disbelieve them.

They simply marketed the Dynamic Gold as a more fine tuned (by weight/flex) shaft.
Instead of just X,S & R etc (and the resulting large gap in actual weight within a shaft flex)
- it was broken by weight into 5 different classes of the flexes). But the main difference
between the two shafts was/is the weight tolerances. In theory, an old stiff flex dynamic shaft of
"average weight" would approximate an S 300 Dynamic Gold all things equal.

People do (and did) so many things to a shaft - I think you have to test all of them to
know the answer (classic or modern). I used to do a lot of clubs that label said were
R 300,400,500 but were tipped - especially in irons. To put it another way - I would never trust
a label without verifying it.

birly-shirly · August 19, 2015

[quote name='NRJyzr' timestamp='1440012273' post='12170928']
Forgot to mention something else...

In the past, Dynamic and Dynamic Gold regular flex was a .580" butt section, while stiff and Xstiff were .600". I'm not sure when it changed to .600 across the board.[/quote]

I looked that up via archived web pages, the answer seems to be that tapered iron shafts changed to a uniform 0.600" regardless of flex in 2006.

I can't see any further back than 1999, but wood shafts appear to have been a uniform butt size at least since then.

[quote name='NRJyzr' timestamp='1440012273' post='12170928']

BS, I also forgot to address your 975F...

There is a 2" difference in tip section between DGR/DGS/DGX as a wood shaft. Using a club I've installed and tip trimmed myself, DGX is something between 8" and 8½" in its uncut state; DGS would be 10-something inches, DGR would be 12-something. (having trouble tracking down any published tip lengths) I remember the fractional portion being around a quarter inch, or even an eighth of an inch, but I'm relying on memory for that. You know where that gets us. LOL

The classic tipping instructions for DG shafts in woods was 1" for standard bore installation, and ½" for blind bore installs. You then tip trimmed the club another inch for a 3 wood, and 2" extra for a 5 wood.

So, a DG 3 wood shaft would have about 6" tip section at X flex, 8" for stiff, and 10" for regular.

If the shaft was done using the old trimming instructions, I suspect the tip would be an inch shorter yet.

[/quote]

Your memory's not bad at all. Again, the TT website via the internet archive gives 8.5, 10.5 and 12.5 inches as the tip lengths for X, S and R.

I also found these trimming instructions from TT.

Head Style Driver 3 wood 4 wood 5 - 7 wood
Throughbore 0.0" 0.5" 0.75" 1.0"
Blind bore 0.5" 1" 1.25" 1.5"
Standard bore 1.25" 1.75" 2" 2.25"

Now the 975F shaft is screenprinted as indeed a R. So I do believe it should have started life with a 12.5" tip. Somewhere along the way it's lost 4.75".

According to TT's own guidance, the club is a blind-bore (>1.25" insertion). And it's a 16.5* head, so let's call it a 4 wood.

So it "should" have been trimmed 1.25", but has lost a further 3.5 in installation which is very nearly 2 full flexes.

[quote name='NRJyzr' timestamp='1440012273' post='12170928']
Now the added fun.... if someone trimmed the shaft using a frequency analyzer, meaning they were performing REAL clubmaking procedures instead of standard cut and glue, all bets are off. You can get an idea from the amount of tip section left, but only an idea; the actual frequency would determine the flex.

I know, it's not much of an answer, but depending on the age of your club, and which wood it is, it sounds like it could be reasonably close to stiff?

Assuming it wasn't a several cpms weak R flex that was tipped extra to get to R, of course.
[/quote]

I'm ruling this out, as the shaft is a Titleist labelled DG and so I presume factory installed. It could of course have been a custom order - but a very weird one to tip it that much but leave it labelled as an R.

However, thanks very much for all the information. It was some of your previous posts around this subject had got me thinking along these lines in the first place.

birly-shirly · August 19, 2015

[quote name='Bella Woods' timestamp='1440017151' post='12171528']
True Temper will tell you the Dynamic and Dynamic Gold are the same material/shaft,
I have no reason to disbelieve them.

They simply marketed the Dynamic Gold as a more fine tuned (by weight/flex) shaft.
Instead of just X,S & R etc (and the resulting large gap in actual weight within a shaft flex)
- it was broken by weight into 5 different classes of the flexes). But the main difference between the two shafts was/is the weight tolerances. In theory, an old stiff flex dynamic shaft of
"average weight" would approximate an S 300 Dynamic Gold all things equal.

People do (and did) so many things to a shaft - I think you have to test all of them to
know the answer (classic or modern). I used to do a lot of clubs that label said were
R 300,400,500 but were tipped - especially in irons. To put it another way - I would never trust
a label without verifying it.
[/quote]

Yes - I'm beginning to see that, although it's very surprising to me that so many clubs that appear to be bog-standard factory spec have been set up in this way. But I suppose there are no real objective standards for flex - so if TT thinks that a regular flex is one thing, but Wilson thinks that its R flex clubs should be much stiffer, who's going to win that one? Or it's all one big design compromise around headweight and length.

[quote name='BIG STU' timestamp='1440015370' post='12171262']
I have a set of 78 Staff Tour Blades I got new around 77-78 never could hit them consistant. They have spent most of their life in the closet. A few years ago when I was learning to use my friend's frequency machine I checked them. Now At that time I was still learning and I had him check them behind me because I was getting some unreal numbers and thought maybe I was loony. He checked them and asked me "what did you do those things?" Nothing I told him they have never been touched except the grips a few years back when once again I tried to hit them. That has always been one screwed up set of irons
[/quote]

What did you see in terms of the numbers, Stu? Were they consistent across the set, but a long way from what you'd expected? Or just all over the place?

birly-shirly · August 19, 2015

Time to get my geek on :)

First off, I have been one of those who mentioned the different trimming instructions. I used "archived shaft data" from Dynacraft's (now Hireko) DSFI. These show the change occurred in 1996, and the result was a softening of the flexes approximately 5 cpm (possibly less in R, but I'm counting that as slop). Which is a half flex, if you like 10 cpm per flex. I'll add a screen image of the page in DSFI where I'm seeing this:

I admit it's supposition, but it's my belief the Dynamic/Dynamic Gold shaft was softened in the 90s for both woods AND irons. About 1" extra tip section left in the clubs, extrapolating from the above pic of DSFI.

This would account for your MacGregors, which I'm assuming are on the classic end of the spectrum, with Dynamic Stiff, but with tip lengths that appear to be between S and X. I should check my own set of Muirfields, Dynamic S.

Which reminds me, I have a set of 78 Staffs. At least one of the shafts has the black ring at the bottom of the first step, indicating Regular. However, as I remember checking them, some of them appear to be shorter than modern DGR flex tip lengths. I should recheck these, also.

And if that's right, then it would seem that you could identify the "true" flex of any Dynamic shaft by ignoring whatever the label says and just measuring the distance to the first step, and comparing it to TT's published specifications and tip-trimming recommendations.

Indeed you can. You can determine what flex your Dynamic shafts would be in the modern DG world by doing what you describe.

I might have to head to the garage with my ruler.... :)

That's some very useful information, thanks. It's hard to put a date on the MacGregor irons I have, as they're a limited edition set rather than one of their regular lines. Pretty sure that everything else is pre-1996, other than the 975F. That info might just help rationalise a few clubs - though I still think my Staffs - Fg49s - must have been hardstepped at least once if not twice even by the standards of the day. On the other hand, at a rough glance, I had 2 sets of Mizunos from the 80s that appeared to match the modern standards, in which case they'd have been effectively softstepped for their time. I too will be getting the tape measure out in the near future.

Bella Woods · August 19, 2015

Birly-shirly:

I think you hit it on the nose - no..... there were never any standards
used by manufacturers as one unit on shaft flex - and it is still that way.

Everybody does their own thing and calls it what they want. Measuring in your
own way (shaft flex board/CPM etc) is the only way to prove it to yourself.

One other thing - you can't usually tell a shaft flex by the first step unless
it is an original shaft never messed with (and how would you know that in most
cases). I can't tell you how many old time shafts I have seen that were tipped
and then had length added to them at some point. That blows the argument for being
able to tell/guess the flex by the distance to the first step.

Original clubs not messed with are a different story based on shaft and club length.

Edit: By length added I am referring to the butt end of the club.

birly-shirly · August 22, 2015

This has been a real eye-opener for me. Turns out that the regular labelled Macgregor woods I have, which I'm sure have factory fitted shafts, are probably stiffer than the stiff-labelled Penna and Titleist woods I've just bought. Great to have some info that lets you see past the labelling and understand how these clubs are really likely to play.

xgolfx · August 24, 2015

Has anyone on this site used a deflection board? When Toney was choosing shafts for personal use, he would weigh each one . Upon selecting a dozen within his tolerances, he would place them on a deflection board which was marked with his personal kick point. The shafts were trimmed ( tipped or butted) to meet his spot at the required length of each club. The label on the shaft had little to do with its playability.
The irons that Jack used when he was his longest had no steps visible because they were on the inside.
CHARLEY PENNA

birly-shirly · August 25, 2015

Can a deflection board be used to analyse built clubs, or is it only useful for measuring the bare shaft?

TimV · August 25, 2015

I have always taken a rather non-scientific two part approach toward all shafts flex.
Having done club work for over 15 years now it became obvious to me early on that a stated flex in one shaft brand and model was not the same as the same stated flex in a different brand and model.
My non-scientific two part approach? Grab just below the butt and above the tip/head and flex the shaft. You can tell a lot by how that feels. If it passes the feel test it can then be hit. That will tell me the rest.

fluffy265 · August 30, 2015

The timing of this thread is uncanny, as I have been learning these lessons the hard way as usual...

A couple of months back I picked up a matched set of Spalding Custom Crafted Persimmon woods with factory DG S400's. While the bulk of my equipment is X flex, my best performing 3 wood uses a DG S400. With that in mind I thought the Spaldings with S400's should play along nicely.

I was wrong. I'd never hit any woods so poorly before. I had a real hard time adjusting to them, I eventually got the driver working okay..ish, but the 3 & 5 woods were epic failures. At the time I just concluded that this was due to a combination of these woods being Std bore ( my best performers are all bore through) and that the amount of weight I added to the heads had a detrimental effect on the shaft's performance.

That line of thought kept me happy for while until I fell in love with a Powerbilt Super Citation 4 wood which I'd thrown in my bag after pumping it's stock TT Duo Power Stiff shaft full of lead. This thing is just automatic on course... but hang on second this is std bore, possibly softer shaft and It's full of lead?

That got me thinking again, I compared the shafts of the Spalding 3 wood with my favourite Yamaha 3 wood both with factory DG S400's. The difference was instantly visible, the Yammy was tipped almost 2 steps more than the Spalding. That explained everything right there and then.

So then I turned my attention to my irons..... I'l leave that story until my next post.

J