Deacon Blues

Great topic. I've been using a CS putter for 20 years so it's really all I've known. I must have received one back then, or ordered one without knowing but I'm just very comfortable w/ that style and didn't really know about center shaft until recently when I started researching putters. As of a few years ago, I assumed I was in the minority but didn't care, felt natural to me. I went with a Never Compromise back around 2005, with the heaviest weight inserts, and that heavy putter head really helped me w/ speed and lag putts. It's been beat up a bit so last year at a large golf store, I spotted a Cleveland HB Soft 10.5 like others have mentioned here. Center shaft, can scoop the ball up behind putter head, milled face, and it was like $150 brand new. I just searched for it and found it here for $90! So now I have (2) CS mallet putters and that's kind of all I know. I have been considering an expensive brand like SC or Evnroll but will take my time. Putting is such a feel aspect of golf, that the CS has always suited my eye and gotten the ball started on the correct line. I have heard CS come up more and more so this post was interesting and maybe I'm no longer in the 5% of putters with a center shaft, maybe it's increased to 15%+ ?? 

I agree with all who said that if a putter makes putts for you, that's the right putter for you!
That being said, here is a brief "center-shafted putter" theory by Putting Guru, Geoff Mangum:
Center Shafted vs. Heel Shafted: Why should you use a center-shafted model????
The key word here is "tastes." A taste is a habit. The Chinese eat dog meat. Some folks in South America eat bug larvae. Some folks in southeast Asia eat monkey brains. 
Historically, putters were usually heel-shafted, mostly because other clubs are heel-shafted and also because the Brits (R&A) banned center-shafted putters for about 50 years. The humorous thing is that center-shafted putters now have such success in the market, that even some designers who previously swore never to make a center-shafted putter have jumped on the bandwagon after abandoning all self-respect and principle. 
If you use a heel-shafted putter, the tool will teach you the "habit" of success with it, or else you will discard it. So if you keep the heel-shafted putter, its inherent physics has trained you into a habit. The habit consists partially of habitual patterns of perception and partially of patterns of movement and feelings. For example, a heel-shafted putter looks and feels a bit more like swinging a bat around your stance, with certain implications for how you perceive the stroke and ball impact, and how you expect things to look and feel in the movement. The instincts rely upon these habits.
If you use a center-shafted putter, the tool will teach you the "habit" of success with it, or else you will discard it. A center-shafted putter swings more vertically up thru a ball, unlike a baseball-style swing with a heel-shafted putter sideways thru a ball. This implies a different set of visual and kinesthetic "habits" in using the center-shafted putter.
You can use a heel-shafted putter with the same habits appropriate to a center-shafted putter if you add a trick or two, and vice versa. (Many if not most belly/long putters are center-shafted, yet swung around the stance more like a bat than a pendulum.) The bottom-line question is which is better, and what is required for you to unlearn inappropriate habits and to learn new, appropriate habits if you switch?
In my view, the center-shafted putter is better in general than heel-shafted putters, because heel-shafted putters have physics in them that promote action of the putter separate and apart from what the golfer is deliberately intending. In particular, the typical hoseling and balancing of a heel-shafted putter promotes so-called "toe flow." This is an EXTRA opening of the putter going back that may or may not be matched coming forward. The physics of "toe-flow" is the added inertia in the stroke of the toe about the axis of the hosel. This physics opens the toe going back, and tends to KEEP the toe open coming thru impact. This doesn't make a lot of sense.
The golfer who gets trained by his heel-shafted putter has to learn how to manipulate the physics of the putter correctly. This obviously can be accomplished over time -- witness Ben Crenshaw. But why engage in a battle that is not compelled? Just don't get a heel-shafted putter. The center-shafted, face-balanced (or reality balanced) putter doesn't have these same tendencies from physics. Then the golfer's task in getting trained by the tool is a little easier and simpler.
Heel-shafted putters are an historical accident that some people seek to justify with a bogus rationale. What the physics really does is make the putter designer an unwitting partner in every stroke: you do this and the designer adds that. I prefer to putt alone.
So when you switch from heel-shafted to center-shafted, you get a slight unburdening, but you are temporarily stuck with old heel-shafted habits. It takes a while to learn the new "look and feel" of the center-shafted putter, and thus "acquire the taste" for the tool.
A compromise is a putter with the actual hoseling towards the heel, but for which the shaft AIMS at the center. These putters are face balanced, and appear to be heel-shafted, but are really center-shafted with heel-hoseling. This would be a good transition putter, allowing you to ease into the tool's training of you without a lot of contrast with old habits.
Keep your tastes -- just get rid of unhelpful physics.

Look at Bell Putters for center shafted putters.  I have one with a 79* upright lie which helps my pendulum style putting stroke.  Bell Putters are available in many styles for half the price!

I started golfing with a 2nd hand center shaft wilson putter. I had no idea to even pay attention to the shaft location on the head back then.  I've always been O.K. at putting. Last year I started gaming a sub70 wide blade center shaft.  Feel is great, consistent. I feel like I can stand right over the top of the ball as opposed to behind it which seems to help me out. 
 

Thanks much to all spy’s for the great feedback on this topic.. 
After many demo sessions, a lot of research and of course all the feedback on the forum, I ended up with the Sik Flo C with KBS CT Tour shaft.
Many hours on the putting green and 6 rounds have confirmed I made the right choice. I can see the line much better and I’m really liking the grooves on the face with the DLT.

I have friends who work for a major supplier to PING and were able to arrange a fitting for me at their Tour Facility.  I walked in with my Cameron Laguna 2.5 and got up onto their perfectly flat astro turf covered granite table and hit five putts with it to 4" aluminum discs that they put down on the astroturf.  I hit what I thought were pretty decent putts hitting the disc with two of five.  The fitting facility included cameras and a iphone that attached to the shaft of my putter.  After I hit three of the five putts with my putter, the PING fitter shook his head in disgust with his arms crossed in front of his chest.  He said, "You weren't fit for that putter, were you?"  I responded, "No, it's a pretty old putter and I did not have putter fitting available to me when I bought it.  I liked how it looked and felt, so I bought it."  He replied, "You couldn't be using a worse putter.  That putter has maximum toe hang and your closing angle is 1.7 degrees."  I replied, "I'm a mechanical engineer and a pretty technical guy, can you explain?"  He then said, "Your stroke is straight back and straight through with essentially no arc.  You need a center shafted mallet.  The putters that fit you are on this wall.  Which one looks the best to you."  I said, "I hate all of them."  He said, "Which one do you hate the least."  I picked one, he set it up to my more upright loft, and added a degree of loft.  I ordered the putter, sold the Cameron and I've been in center shafted, minimal toe hang mallet putters ever since.

I just bought my second center-shafted putter, a Cleveland HB Soft 11C.  It's replacing my my HB Soft 10.5C, which got bent due to some stuff piled into the back of my truck.  
I prefer the center shaft.  The alignment just looks better to me and I feel like I get a better, straighter sweep of the ball with it.  If the 10.5C hadn't been bent I'd still be using that one, as I like the mallet head shape.  The 11C has some wings, but the head itself is still deeper than a blade putter.
My putting has dropped steadily, I now average 1.8 per 18 holes.  
 
 

Now you're speaking my language! I've owned dozens of center shafted putters over the last 30 years, and they now make up the entirety of my arsenal:
Ping DS72 C (the gamer) Sub 70 005 Wide Blade CS (2 of these: a 35" and a 37.5") Wishon S2R 4 (2 of these: a 35" (not pictured) and a 37.5") Byron Morgan 007 Spud (won in a fantasy golf contest on the old PutterTalk Forum in 2010) Plop Original New & Improved Bell TW-370 Rife Barbados CS (now in my wife's bag)

Absolutely. I currently use a Ping c67 center shafted putter!

I have used center shafted putters for 25 years. Currently using a Cure CX1 with a JumboMax S1.2 grip. I have gone back to conventional heal shafted a number of times but always find myself returning to what is most comfortable for me. Currently have close to twenty center shafted putters in my shop. 

For 30 years, I have preferred a center shafted putter. For 28 of those years , I have been using a centershafted  broomstick. From 2016-18, I used a 33" centershafted from ping, seemore and odyssey.
I still have them all ..... see pictures. 
 
I mentally prefer the symmetrical look and balance. I'm not sure I can try anything else. My putting swing path travels directly down my target time.

Fellow Spy’s,
I am looking to purchase a new putter and need feedback from anyone currently gaming a center shafted putter. Many years ago I gamed a center shafted putter which always produced great results due to a straight back and through stroke. My stroke evolved into a gradual arc and I am currently gaming a SC Newport 1.5.
Old habits die and now my stroke seems to have regressed back to a straight back and forward stroke, hence the curiosity and possible need for a center shafted type putter. 
So, recommendations, suggestions, endorsements? My short list is Evenroll ( groove technology), Sik (DLT has my attention), SC Phantom line.
All feedback welcomed and appreciated. Thx much.

I mean there is one very obvious answer...

For me, and I’ve always felt this way, this is the best golf logo ever! 

I love this logo simply because it's a bucket list course for me and would probably eat my lunch, but it's so beautiful!

Some really good answers already on this thread. I want to echo the nominations for Srixon, Cleveland (I honestly don't get why none of the Cleveland/Srixon guys on Tour use their putters), and Tour Edge (love their FW and hybrids, especially).
Cobra drivers likely belong on this list.
I'm going to zag a bit here: I could almost make the case that both PING and Titleist are underrated, just from the perspective that TaylorMade and Callaway are both so flashy that PING and Titleist seem almost staid and pedestrian by comparison. So while it seems weird to say to two of the behemoth OEMs are in any way underrated, I'm willing to be a little weird.

I go back and forth between a 3W and 2 Hybrid.  I hit the hybrid almost as far but can hit it a bit more consistently it seems.
 

I've never had any luck with my 3 wood, and trying to hit it off the deck is a real nightmare.  So, I've just added a second hybrid into the bag knowing that it might not go as far, but at least it will stay in the fairway. 

Yep, I went from driver to Hy-Wood (18*) then onto a 25* 5 hybrid. I found that fairway simply wasn't a club I was using often, however unlike the OP distance is NOT a strength LOL! It was more consistency than anything else (or lack thereof). Thankfully more work, a better feel for course management, and a few lessons had me wanting to put a fairway back in the bag which happened thanks to the Mizuno Long Game test. So we'll see if newer tech and a fitting help out on the fairway wood front. But when I pulled it out initially, I honestly didn't miss it at all. 

As the title would suggest, I am toying with the idea of ditching my 3 wood and adding an additional long iron.  Distance is one of my strengths, and I play my 3 hybrid 19.5 deg. to 240 carry.  My next iron is a P770 4 iron that I play to about 210 carry.  I am horrendous with my fairway wood, but when it does stay remotely straight it is a 270 club and is rarely used for one reason or another.  Thinking about getting a p790 3 iron and adjusting my hybrid to 18 degrees in the hopes of filling that 225 range and having the hybrid jump a few more yards.
Anyone else done something similar?  My gapping towards the bottom of the bag is pretty good so an additional wedge wouldn't help me.  

I have to ask, is the "twig feeling just in the PW or the entire set of graphite irons. 
Or
are the wedges so heavy you dont have a choice but to drop them behind the ball. 
As you said the difference between a 65 gram iron shaft and old school wedge is staggering. You might find a common ground selection in a 95 g iron shaft with a 105 to 115 wedge shaft to make the transition easier.

That's Will Lowery (https://willlowery.com/).
I've known Will since he was 6 years old; his dad Cliff is a friend of mine. We used to play tennis together regularly, and Will would always tag along. He would pick up one of his dad's racquets (which were way too big and heavy for him at the time) and hit two-handed backhands and forehands (like Monica Seles). When he tagged along with his dad on the golf course too, Will's two-handed (cross-handed) forehand became his golf swing, and the rest is history.

That's Will Lowery (https://willlowery.com/).
I've known Will since he was 6 years old; his dad Cliff is a friend of mine. We used to play tennis together regularly, and Will would always tag along. He would pick up one of his dad's racquets (which were way too big and heavy for him at the time) and hit two-handed backhands and forehands (like Monica Seles). When he tagged along with his dad on the golf course too, Will's two-handed (cross-handed) forehand became his golf swing, and the rest is history.