Shimada has new distribution in the USA, Oban. Oban has a little over 100 fitters in the US, all of which have been visited and evaluated by Oban management. My understanding is that the Shimada shafts will be available exclusively through the network of Oban fitters. Earlier this year I reviewed the Shimada 115g CT iron shaft. It will soon be joined by a lighter weight fitting set. The Tour 301 and Tour Lite are more conventional constant weight tapers.
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As you have seen in the charts, Shimada manufacturing quality is second to none. It is good to finally have reliable distribution in the US. Shaft to shaft consistency in the four sets I measured is perfect. If you are looking for light weight iron shafts, set consistency sets steel apart from carbon fiber. You can be confident that sets made from either the mid 90 gram Shimada 3001 and the 106 gram Shimada Tour Lite will be consistent through the set.
Oban in a partnership with Shimada, has introduced a set of iron shafts through their dealers called the CT-115. A taper tip shaft with a constant weight of 115 grams, it comes in 12 discreet lengths which in turn can be fit and assembled to bring you 7 different flexes. As follows; R, R+, S-, S, S+, X- and X. The lengths are 36” thru 41.5” in half inch increments. The aesthetics of this shaft provide a nice, brushed chrome finish and an eye-catching, hologram shaft label that you can apply over the steps on the shaft without any form of wrinkling. Now that is a club builders dream!
The club builder selects a group of shafts to build a set. Using the shorter shafts, the set is stiffer. With a group selected from the longer end of the matrix, the set will be stiffer. All of the shafts are .355 tips and all were remarkably consistent in weight as you can see in the chart below. The word remarkable meant 115.3 grams plus – minus .3 grams. To put that in perspective, a typical set of constant weight irons usually has a bit less than a 2 gram range. Adding to that attention to quality, the radial consistency was 99.9% with a 0.1% standard deviation. That’s impressive, aligning these is truly useless.
We have built a number of fitting irons with these shafts (PXG and Miura) all through the flex range and the numbers are quite impressive. Taking it from the Fitting Studio and on through the consequential building process we liked what we saw especially with the better player, who launched these lower in the shorter irons, higher in the longer ones and all with the characteristics of a low to mid-spin shaft.
Lets here from Ralph Riechert, the President of Oban, discussing the shafts with Woody Lashen of Pete’s Golf at the 2017 PGA Merchandise show.
The technical discussion and measurements are available only to registered readers
This set of iron shafts is designed for a golf fitter that wants to deliver precisely tuned stiffness to their clients. In the past, that was done by tip trimming parallel shafts. The Oban CT-115 has all the advantages of parallel shaft designs with none of the disadvantaged. Advantage one, the set will be constant weight not descending. Advantage two, the stiffness steps between clubs is precisely done by the factory and not left to the club makers frequency instrument. Advantage three, the set stiffness range is on the high side unlike parallel sets which tend to be on the low end.
Below are the Launch Monitor results of a 2 Handicap… A big, strong, strapping guy who can hit the ball as good as any I’ve had. He loved the feel of the shaft and did not have any reservations with the 115-gram weight. We brought him through the fitting process with all of the premium shafts that we offer. In the end, the OBAN won out with feel, stability, ball flight and ball dispersion.
The technical discussion and measurements are available only to registered readers
Give your club fitter a call and check it out! It just may be a shaft for you…
The latest model from Oban Composites is the Kyoshi Tour Limited. Released in 2014, this high modulus composite shaft features a tip section that is stiffer than all of the other Kyoshi models. Looking at the EI bend profile of this shaft, the shaft maintains it’s stiffness to about the 15 inch mark, then drastically softens and maintains that softness through the shaft to the butt section where it stiffens again around the 33 inch section. We used the 60 in 04 (stiff) flex. This shaft in the 60 and 70 stiffens in the butt section to produce higher launch conditions without increasing spin rates. We took the shaft to the range to test it out, and came back with some profound results.
The technical discussion and measurements are available only to registered readers
To continue reading this section of the review, you must be registered at a higher level membership. Russ
To continue reading this section of the review, you must be registered at a higher level membership. Russ
The OBAN Kiyoshi Gold Driver shaft was introduced in 2014. It is the latest and perhaps the last we are told, of the Kiyoshi family of shafts from Oban composites. This high modulus composite shaft features a tip section that is softer than all of the other Kyoshi models. Looking at the EI bend profile of this shaft, the shaft maintains it’s softness throughout the shaft into the butt section when compared to the other Kyoshi models. We used the 65 in 04 (stiff) flex when testing. Although this shaft didn’t seem to be a perfect match for our tester, it did give us some interesting data to look at.
The technical discussion and measurements are available only to registered readers
To continue reading this section of the review, you must be registered at a higher level membership. Russ
To continue reading this section of the review, you must be registered at a higher level membership. Russ
In our testing and fitting of the Revenge, the results have been consistent with the EI Bend Profile shown above and Oban’s description of the shaft in their marketing materials. The tip section of this shaft, described as “responsive” by Oban, is definitely softer than the the tip sections of the other shafts in Oban’s line. This “responsive tip” results in a mid-high to mid launching shaft with the launch progressively getting lower as the shaft gets stiffer. The use of ultra premium, high modulus graphite materials provides the typical Oban signature stability and feel. This shaft is both responsive and stable at the same time.
The technical discussion and measurements are available only to registered readers
