How do I get into the archives??? I know, I know it's been covered many times...........I forgot the answer!!
A memory is a terrible thing to waste, Kevin -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Dave Tutelman Sent: Thursday, February 06, 2003 11:43 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: ShopTalk: Taper or parallel At 10:36 AM 2/6/03 -0500, LilCallaway wrote: >What's the difference and benefits of each? I'll take a shot at it. (Let me see if I can remember to file it this time, so I don't have to type it in yet again. The subject comes up every couple of years.) There is little or no performance difference between them. The real differences are: * FLEX CONTROL. You can control the flex/frequency of parallel tip shafts by tip trimming. Your control of taper tip shafts is minimal to none, depending on whether the tip jams into the hosel tight (you have no control) or the tip bottoms (you may have 1-2 cpm of control, not much at all). So your controls boil down to: - Trust the manufacturer to get the frequency right. - Over-order and select by measured frequency (you do the measuring and selecting). * COST CONTROL. The large-volume manufacturer comes out on the opposite side of the fence from the small-volume custom clubmaker. Here's why: INVENTORY: Consider the shafts you need to keep in stock to make a set of irons in R and S Dynamic. (This is a popular choice, but similar arithmetic works for many shafts that are available as taper or parallel.) For parallel, you need to stock only one model of raw shaft: the Dynamic R/S combi. For taper, you need to stock 16 different shafts: R & S separately, each in 3-iron through PW. That means that taper is not cost-effective to inventory unless you do large and/or predictable runs of these clubs. OEMs do. Custom shops don't. MANUFACTURING LABOR: Making the clubs has a labor component in it, even for the OEMs. In fact, with their purchasing power holding component costs down, the labor is a big percentage of the cost. So they want to minimize the steps and the skill necessary. Taper tips eliminate the step of tip-trimming. That reduces one of the labor steps of assembly, and one that could be error-prone (in other words, requires some skill to avoid error) because each club takes a different trim. So taper tips save labor costs. The custom shop, OTOH, is selling skilled labor as its differentiator, so taper tips are not a plus. That's why you'll find: * Most OEM clubs have taper tip. * Most components aimed at the custom market are parallel tip. There's also the THEORETICAL advantage to taper tips that the manufacturer can tune each shaft to the club for which it is intended. (E.g.- have lower bend points on the longer irons.) Nowadays, this is called "flighting" shafts. But the advantage is theoretical only. There are some shaft models that are indeed flighted, but there is no bias to taper-tip shafts for this property. Almost all flighted models I've seen are available in parallel tip, and some are also available tapered. A minor mythology has arisen among the camp that says, "OEM clubs must be better, because they're so much more expensive/used-on-tour/pushed-by-my-pro or whatever other excuse." This argument goes on to say that taper tips are used because they're better than parallel tip. If you believe this, you should just be buying your clubs from the OEMs anyway. Cheers! DaveT
