Can you soft step flighted iron shafts?

[xxsoultonesxx]

I've been wondering lately how my irons would play with soft stepped shafts. I'm currently using PX 6.0 Flighted shafts in my J36's and my fitting bounced me back an forth between the 5.5's and the 6.0's. SS with a 6 iron was 88-92.

[WUTiger]

I talked to my pro about softstepping PX 5.0 shafts in some Callaway irons. Process is simple:

• Pull out the shafts from the clubheads.
• Reinsert the 8i shaft in the 9i head, and butt-trim the new club.
• Reinsert the 7i shaft in the 8i head, and butt-trim the new club.
• Keep doing this until you get to lowest-numbered iron in your set. If it is the 3i, the fitter would need to order a matching 2-iron shaft from PX, insert it in the 3i, and butt-trim it.

Softstepping makes the shafts about a half-flex less stiff.

Note: The opposite of softstepping is hard-stepping. In hardstepping, you reverse the process and insert the 9i shaft into the 8i head, and probably extend the shaft.

What you may have been thinking about was tipping the shaft. This involves trimming the tip to increase stiffness. With a flighted shaft , tipping might mess up the flighting - I don't know for sure. Any experts out there?

[xxsoultonesxx]

Definitely not trying to make these any stiffer. I was just curious whether or not flighted shafts needed any special treatment in the soft stepping process.