Talk to me if you are golfing with custom-made, or custom-fit clubs...

[TXjammer]

Thanks for everyone's replies!
Here's what I have gathered so far:
1) I think it's conclusive that a fitting where a pro is watching you hit and checking ball flight and building/changing clubs accordingly, is going to be most effective.

2) Sounds like the majority vote is that money is not the issue if comparitively you will get out of the set what you were after for an amount of time that suits you and your budget.

3) If you read back through this thread, it is conclusive that every club in the bag can be a totally different animal from the next to suit how a person plays. Therefor a standard set of clubs is pretty much out of the question at this point no matter how I would order them. I'm too serious about golf at this point to try to "move up" to not have a more tactical approach. (I think) LOL

4) The most influencial statements in this thread are the ones that say "I would never go back..." That says alot to me.

5) While talking to a friend who is an assistant pro yesterday, we discussed a place that will let me "test drive" different brands of clubs to find the best suitor for how I play. So next step for me will be taking some "test drives" and see what puts my old clubs to shame and go from there.

[TXjammer]

Just thought I would post that I found the clubs that seem to be what I've been needing (as my signature now reflects)... Callaway X22 Tour irons with Xproject 6.0 shafts. One things is for sure....these clubs reward you like a king when your swing is sweet....when your off though....they will definitely let you know! I have a whole new set of increased yardages now, and that provides some added confidence.

Thanks for all the good advice and pointers! Hope to be posting some scores in the 70s soon!

[hoser]

Congrats on the new clubs!

I'm a little late to the party, but I thought I'd post my experience anyway. My current set up was all custom made or custom fitted, with the exception of the putter. Based on my experience over the last 2 years trying to find a good fitter (I went to about 5 different shops/pros), I've observed fitting comes in couple of flavours:

Basic Fitting
Lie, Loft, Length - You will hit some shots off a lie board and you will be measured for hand size and wrist to floor. Tape up some 6 irons off the rack and compare. This is a pretty standard Golftown/Golf Galaxy experience.

OK Fitting
In addition to the above, you will probably hit a few different heads and few different shafts on simulator. You'll get some semi-reliable data about launch angle club head speed and ball speed.

Deluxe Fitting
Done at a range on a launch monitor. You will get spin rates, ball dispersion, distance, angle of attack, club head speed and ball speed of several different head and shaft combinations. The decision is pretty academic based on the data. Optimal spin rates and smash factor basically make your decision for you.

I did a deluxe style fitting with a few extras thrown in.

My guy did the following :
1) Frequency measured my existing set and charted the length, lie and loft
2) Had me hit a dozen or so balls with a 5i to get a baseline on the launch monitor so we could compare all other combinations
3) The baseline numbers weren't great. My original set up had spin rates that were too low.
4) We hit a number of head shaft combinations
5) A really cool thing he did was take my 5i club head off my shaft and attached a special connector that allowed me to hit several shaft combinations with my existing mp 60 head

Based on all the data we gathered over 3, 1 hour sessions, we decided to:

1. Replace all of my wedge shafts (DG 200) with Rifle 6.2 and keep the Vokey heads (they were new anyway)
2. Replace all of my iron shafts (DG 300) with Rifle 6.2 and keep MP 60 heads (about a year old at the time)
3. Shortened all my clubs by a quarter of an inch over my previous shafts
4. He built me a new Driver and 3w with Ping G10 heads and Accra M4 shaft but we shortened those clubs up too for better control
5. We replaced the hybrid shafts with steel.

So, he retrofitted some of my clubs and built me new ones based on the data we collected. In all I hit about 5 different iron heads with 6 different shafts. Additionally, I hit 3 different driver heads with 8 different shafts. I didn't bother to compare hybrid shafts since I was nailing my irons, moving to steel was a pretty easy decision for consistency sake.

Finding someone with the right tools and knowledge to do a deluxe style fitting is pretty difficult. The guy I went to is club builder. He doesn't sell off the rack clubs and doesn't have a store front. Basically, he works out of a driving range. He had invested pretty heavily in the technology to get the correct data. Also, we had a pretty good understanding of what good target numbers looked like.

So, after all of this, here are my thoughts.

Pros
I know my clubs absolutely fit my game throughout my whole bag
I was able to make some good decisions like shortening my driver from 45.75 to 44.25 based on the dispersion and smash factor numbers.
It didn't take very long once I found the right fitter

Cons
In order to get new clubs (wedges mostly) to fit my set, I basically have to go back to this guy. Not a lot shops fit for Rifle shafts.
It was pretty expensive. The fitting didn't cost me anything, but the new shafts and woods were expensive.
Getting repairs or alterations done isn't very quick.

Overall I am super satisfied. My handicap dropped from 9.1 to 5.5 over this past summer. Practice helped, but the equipment probably saves me 2 strokes.

[hoser]

Congrats on the new clubs!

I'm a little late to the party, but I thought I'd post my experience anyway. My current set up was all custom made or custom fitted, with the exception of the putter. Based on my experience over the last 2 years trying to find a good fitter (I went to about 5 different shops/pros), I've observed fitting comes in couple of flavours:

Basic Fitting
Lie, Loft, Length - You will hit some shots off a lie board and you will be measured for hand size and wrist to floor. Tape up some 6 irons off the rack and compare. This is a pretty standard Golftown/Golf Galaxy experience.

OK Fitting
In addition to the above, you will probably hit a few different heads and few different shafts on simulator. You'll get some semi-reliable data about launch angle club head speed and ball speed.

Deluxe Fitting
Done at a range on a launch monitor. You will get spin rates, ball dispersion, distance, angle of attack, club head speed and ball speed of several different head and shaft combinations. The decision is pretty academic based on the data. Optimal spin rates and smash factor basically make your decision for you.

I did a deluxe style fitting with a few extras thrown in.

My guy did the following :
1) Frequency measured my existing set and charted the length, lie and loft
2) Had me hit a dozen or so balls with a 5i to get a baseline on the launch monitor so we could compare all other combinations
3) The baseline numbers weren't great. My original set up had spin rates that were too low.
4) We hit a number of head shaft combinations
5) A really cool thing he did was take my 5i club head off my shaft and attached a special connector that allowed me to hit several shaft combinations with my existing mp 60 head

Based on all the data we gathered over 3, 1 hour sessions, we decided to:

1. Replace all of my wedge shafts (DG 200) with Rifle 6.2 and keep the Vokey heads (they were new anyway)
2. Replace all of my iron shafts (DG 300) with Rifle 6.2 and keep MP 60 heads (about a year old at the time)
3. Shortened all my clubs by a quarter of an inch over my previous shafts
4. He built me a new Driver and 3w with Ping G10 heads and Accra M4 shaft but we shortened those clubs up too for better control
5. We replaced the hybrid shafts with steel.

So, he retrofitted some of my clubs and built me new ones based on the data we collected. In all I hit about 5 different iron heads with 6 different shafts. Additionally, I hit 3 different driver heads with 8 different shafts. I didn't bother to compare hybrid shafts since I was nailing my irons, moving to steel was a pretty easy decision for consistency sake.

Finding someone with the right tools and knowledge to do a deluxe style fitting is pretty difficult. The guy I went to is club builder. He doesn't sell off the rack clubs and doesn't have a store front. Basically, he works out of a driving range. He had invested pretty heavily in the technology to get the correct data. Also, we had a pretty good understanding of what good target numbers looked like.

So, after all of this, here are my thoughts.

Pros
I know my clubs absolutely fit my game throughout my whole bag
I was able to make some good decisions like shortening my driver from 45.75 to 44.25 based on the dispersion and smash factor numbers.
It didn't take very long once I found the right fitter

Cons
In order to get new clubs (wedges mostly) to fit my set, I basically have to go back to this guy. Not a lot shops fit for Rifle shafts.
It was pretty expensive. The fitting didn't cost me anything, but the new shafts and woods were expensive.
Getting repairs or alterations done isn't very quick.

Overall I am super satisfied. My handicap dropped from 9.1 to 5.5 over this past summer. Practice helped, but the equipment probably saves me 2 strokes.

[bigoak]

I am a gluer. On a static fitting at a demo day I speced out at 2 degrees flat and standard length. At a ping dynamic fitting I speced out 2 degrees upright and one inch overlength. I took an older set of ping eye II which were flat and put dynamic gold light shafts at one inch over length and they seem to work fine. My point is try both static and dynamic fitting and then demo the clubs and see what works.

[TXjammer]

I really appreciate you taking the time to share, hoser* ....and I have to admit, there are a few terms in your post that I have no idea what they mean!?!? Like "smash factor"...is that golf ball compression? None the less, it sounds to me like the guy who built your clubs covered absolutely EVERY base.

The static fitting that I had done when I bought the clubs suggested that I am a standard lie fit. But I will be getting fitted much more like what you did soon, just saving some money first.

[montru]

I had a fitting back in the beginning of the summer, I did put a thread out there if you search it, I would say it was the best thing I ever did.
I eneded up having new shafts put in a set of r7's I had in the garage, I played Cobra's beforehand.
The cost of the fitting was $99 and I got $75 back off the purchase price of the shafts, he offered me some new "custom" heads but I went for his shafts in my old heads.

The first time out I shot back to back 79's then kept in the low 80's ever since, I have had a bit of a crap summer and haven't played much due to other commitments but have kept to a 12hcp, I dropped from a 16 to a 12 as soon as I got the new shafts.