Edel SMS and SMS Pro Irons - 2023 Forum Review

[ChitownM2]

18 hours ago, pozzit said:

I'm really curious to understand how the fitting goes and how knowledgeable the fitters are. Also if someone does get the extra weight how much fine dialing in you can get.

I'm outside Chicago so I have a few fitting options and have verified and followed up to confirm that my fitter has the SMS heads and an extra weight kit so we can tinker as part of the fitting process.  

I've done an iron fitting before and have a general idea of where I'll likely end up for shaft so I think a good portion of the fitting will be messing with the weights to see what works best.  Since I won't be trying out a bunch of different heads I figure we should have plenty of time during the session.

[scotter032]

I thought this was a cool YouTube video from Mr Short Game on his experience with the Edel SMS Pro irons he got.... 

 

[ChitownM2]

It's fitting day for me!  Just need to get through this pesky day job first .

If anyone has any questions let know and I'll try to get the answers tonight.

[ejgaudette]

24 minutes ago, ChitownM2 said:

It's fitting day for me!  Just need to get through this pesky day job first .

If anyone has any questions let know and I'll try to get the answers tonight.

Those pesky jobs always getting in the way

[Triple_Putt]

23 minutes ago, ChitownM2 said:

It's fitting day for me!  Just need to get through this pesky day job first .

If anyone has any questions let know and I'll try to get the answers tonight.

Have fun! Take pictures unlike my over-excited self 

[CFreddie]

12 minutes ago, Triple_Putt said:

Have fun! Take pictures unlike my over-excited self 

What he said! Take pictures!!!

[ZMendle10]

Congratulations to all of the testers! This is a really exciting one to be apart of and I can't wait to follow along.

[Tincuptim]

Can't wait to read the feedback!

[invee123]

I'm stoked to keep an eye on this thread (my wallet may not be though)! I've seen a decent amount of coverage on their in-depth club fittings and customization and I am excited to see what the spies come up with versus their current set!

[CarlosP]

Can’t wait to see if these compare to the PXGs

[pozzit]

On 4/13/2023 at 6:49 AM, ChitownM2 said:

It's fitting day for me!  Just need to get through this pesky day job first .

If anyone has any questions let know and I'll try to get the answers tonight.

How did the fitting go? Any interesting takaways?

[GolfSpy BOS]

All fittings are done, orders submitted, and confirmation e-mails received!

Introductions and fitting results will be posted soon!  I do have a summary of all the fittings, but I'll add that after so that I don't steal any thunder from the testers!

Be on the lookout for updates this week! 

[ChitownM2]

1 hour ago, pozzit said:

How did the fitting go? Any interesting takaways?

Fitting was a bit of a mess actually.  The fitter knew I was coming in solely looking a the SMS irons and I think he did some homework on them on them as I don't believe he was familiar with them beforehand (they didn't even know whether they had the heads when I first called to schedule).  He had come up with a plan to try and determine the best position for the heavy weight by having me make swings with just the 8g weight in each spot with each shaft.  When he handed the club to me the first time I questioned having only 1 weight in and two empty slots but he said it was to exaggerate the affect of the weight and we would add the others back later in the fitting.  I thought it seemed odd, but assumed he was the pro and we proceeded with the fitting (this will be important later).  I tend to have a really low ball flight from coming in too steep so in my previous fittings I'm usually looking at lighter weight higher launching shafts and this fitting was no exception.  We looked at the steelfiber i95 Stiff and the Tour Lite Stiff and I went through each of them trying the weight in each of the 3 spots.  During this phase I was struggling to put good swings on the ball and had a lot of poor strikes.  

We followed that process through and determined that the steelfibers and center weigh position were the best.  We started adding the other weights back in and worked through various options until we arrived at a 2-8-4 (T-C-H) weight configuration and my swings were becoming more consistent.  It was getting close to closing and I could tell he was ready to wrap it up as I was the last customer for the day and I asked to try throwing the 10g weight in and he obliged and I had a few more strikes that might have been my best of the evening with more consistency overall then earlier.  On that he shut the GC Quad down and we went to the front for me to pay for the fitting and write down the final specs.  As I was about to leave I asked him what the final swing weight of the club ended up being and he replied that he didn't know.  We took it back and measured it and it came to D1, which was about 2 points lighter than my gamers that he had measured during warm-ups.  I inquired about what weights it would take to get me up to a D3 to match what I had been use to swinging and so we played around for another 5 min and determined that a 4-10-6 config would put me at like D2.8 which was close enough.  At that point the machines had all been shut down and we were the only 2 left and I had checked my phone to see I had a mini emergency brewing at home so I ended up just leaving.

On the drive home I was thinking about the fitting and the final weight configuration and started doing the math in my head and realized that I had 20g of weight in the head to get me to D3 and that when we were doing the entire shaft selection process I had only 8g weight in the head, which was a 12g difference and about 6 SW points.   Meaning I did the entire shaft selection with the clubhead at a C7 SW, 6 points lighter than I'm accustomed to.  I realized that this could have been a big contributor as to why I was making such poor contact earlier and tried to call them back, but it was now 15 min past close and no one answered so I continued home to deal with my emergency.  I also realized that I never actually took any swings with the club in the final weight configuration that we agreed I should order so after some private discussion with the other testers here I decided that I had to go back.  Fortunately I didn't have any early meetings the next day and was able to go back as soon as they opened and hop on a bay before their schedule filled up for the day.  I hit the steel fiber shaft with the 4-10-6 weight combo and it produced some pretty good swings / strikes, better than any from the night before.  I also gave the Tour Lite another chance with the same weight configuration but the steel fibers still won out so I left and was confident that I had the right setup.

In the end, I think a big part of this was that the fitter was not very familiar with the Edel weight system.  He did make an effort to research them and did have a game plan but I think there was a big flaw with that plan being that he didn't consider what the effects of removing the weights would be on the club swing weight.  I believe this was also exacerbated by the fact that the stock D2 swing weight with the standard 2-8-2 weight configuration is probably based on a 120g+ shaft like the regular KBS Tour or the Dynamic Golf S400.  When you start getting into really light shafts like I was swinging at 95g and you remove the headweights it has a pretty tremendous effect on the final SW.  In the end it didn't end up being a problem, but it certainly could have been had I not been as familiar with swing weights and club building and was able to figure all of this out on my own.  It's certainly something I don't think the average golfer would have picked up on, especially since a majority of them have never been fit to begin with.

On a more general note, one thing I would say is this fitting took a long time.  Since we were limited to the stock options from Edel, I only actually tested out 2 shafts and I knew going in what head I was getting so I went in there thinking it would be quick, but it took awhile to go through and tinker with the weights.  I hit a lot of golf balls in those 90 min.  I do think that this would be a pretty rough process if someone were to go for a truly brand agnostic fitting.  If you were going to hit iron options from Callaway, TM, Mizuno, Srixon, etc and then end up narrowing it down to the Edel heads, I think you would have to be a speed demon to get through it all in the normal time allotted for an iron fitting.  You'd also have to have some pretty incredible stamina to hit that many balls in such a short amount of time.  I probably hit 2 rounds of balls between warm-up and the testing so I couldn't imagine adding in taking swings from several other brands on top of it all.

  

[pozzit]

1 hour ago, ChitownM2 said:

Fitting was a bit of a mess actually.  The fitter knew I was coming in solely looking a the SMS irons and I think he did some homework on them on them as I don't believe he was familiar with them beforehand (they didn't even know whether they had the heads when I first called to schedule).  He had come up with a plan to try and determine the best position for the heavy weight by having me make swings with just the 8g weight in each spot with each shaft.  When he handed the club to me the first time I questioned having only 1 weight in and two empty slots but he said it was to exaggerate the affect of the weight and we would add the others back later in the fitting.  I thought it seemed odd, but assumed he was the pro and we proceeded with the fitting (this will be important later).  I tend to have a really low ball flight from coming in too steep so in my previous fittings I'm usually looking at lighter weight higher launching shafts and this fitting was no exception.  We looked at the steelfiber i95 Stiff and the Tour Lite Stiff and I went through each of them trying the weight in each of the 3 spots.  During this phase I was struggling to put good swings on the ball and had a lot of poor strikes.  

We followed that process through and determined that the steelfibers and center weigh position were the best.  We started adding the other weights back in and worked through various options until we arrived at a 2-8-4 (T-C-H) weight configuration and my swings were becoming more consistent.  It was getting close to closing and I could tell he was ready to wrap it up as I was the last customer for the day and I asked to try throwing the 10g weight in and he obliged and I had a few more strikes that might have been my best of the evening with more consistency overall then earlier.  On that he shut the GC Quad down and we went to the front for me to pay for the fitting and write down the final specs.  As I was about to leave I asked him what the final swing weight of the club ended up being and he replied that he didn't know.  We took it back and measured it and it came to D1, which was about 2 points lighter than my gamers that he had measured during warm-ups.  I inquired about what weights it would take to get me up to a D3 to match what I had been use to swinging and so we played around for another 5 min and determined that a 4-10-6 config would put me at like D2.8 which was close enough.  At that point the machines had all been shut down and we were the only 2 left and I had checked my phone to see I had a mini emergency brewing at home so I ended up just leaving.

On the drive home I was thinking about the fitting and the final weight configuration and started doing the math in my head and realized that I had 20g of weight in the head to get me to D3 and that when we were doing the entire shaft selection process I had only 8g weight in the head, which was a 12g difference and about 6 SW points.   Meaning I did the entire shaft selection with the clubhead at a C7 SW, 6 points lighter than I'm accustomed to.  I realized that this could have been a big contributor as to why I was making such poor contact earlier and tried to call them back, but it was now 15 min past close and no one answered so I continued home to deal with my emergency.  I also realized that I never actually took any swings with the club in the final weight configuration that we agreed I should order so after some private discussion with the other testers here I decided that I had to go back.  Fortunately I didn't have any early meetings the next day and was able to go back as soon as they opened and hop on a bay before their schedule filled up for the day.  I hit the steel fiber shaft with the 4-10-6 weight combo and it produced some pretty good swings / strikes, better than any from the night before.  I also gave the Tour Lite another chance with the same weight configuration but the steel fibers still won out so I left and was confident that I had the right setup.

In the end, I think a big part of this was that the fitter was not very familiar with the Edel weight system.  He did make an effort to research them and did have a game plan but I think there was a big flaw with that plan being that he didn't consider what the effects of removing the weights would be on the club swing weight.  I believe this was also exacerbated by the fact that the stock D2 swing weight with the standard 2-8-2 weight configuration is probably based on a 120g+ shaft like the regular KBS Tour or the Dynamic Golf S400.  When you start getting into really light shafts like I was swinging at 95g and you remove the headweights it has a pretty tremendous effect on the final SW.  In the end it didn't end up being a problem, but it certainly could have been had I not been as familiar with swing weights and club building and was able to figure all of this out on my own.  It's certainly something I don't think the average golfer would have picked up on, especially since a majority of them have never been fit to begin with.

On a more general note, one thing I would say is this fitting took a long time.  Since we were limited to the stock options from Edel, I only actually tested out 2 shafts and I knew going in what head I was getting so I went in there thinking it would be quick, but it took awhile to go through and tinker with the weights.  I hit a lot of golf balls in those 90 min.  I do think that this would be a pretty rough process if someone were to go for a truly brand agnostic fitting.  If you were going to hit iron options from Callaway, TM, Mizuno, Srixon, etc and then end up narrowing it down to the Edel heads, I think you would have to be a speed demon to get through it all in the normal time allotted for an iron fitting.  You'd also have to have some pretty incredible stamina to hit that many balls in such a short amount of time.  I probably hit 2 rounds of balls between warm-up and the testing so I couldn't imagine adding in taking swings from several other brands on top of it all.

  

Wow sounds like quite the ordeal.  Thats my biggest concern with the fittings is how knowledgeable they fitters are. This opens up many more doors for the fitter but it now something new that may not fit into their time alloted. I appreciate all the extra effort you are putting in to make it right for this test. I'm glad you came to the right combination but the confirmation really allows you to not second guess. 

[ejgaudette]

I will also share more about my fitting in the intro, but I live in a rural area so things are spread out so the closest fitter is 2 hours away so getting there was not going to work out. I did however get to a golf shop 1 hour away where I could test all the shafts available from Edel to get a feel for where I wanted to go from that stand point. The shop had the Mizuno shaft optimizer which was fun to try but as expected it loves to give me weight, all in the 130 gram range, but I am not a huge fan of that feel. Suffice to say it was interesting to try them all and did take a lot of time even since I stuck to one Mizuno 921 Tour head since they offered the same shafts as stock as the Edels and removed that variable when comparing.

Growing up I played a set of 07 TM Burner irons with a stock light weight steel shaft and got used to that. A few years ago I went to a set of Ping I500 with Dynamic Gold S300s and at this time I knew nothing about shaft weight and it was quite the change. So when I replaced them I wanted to go a bit lighter and move to graphite so I found the Fuji Tour Spec 115i shafts to shave off 15 grams and that was a nice changes. Well in this testing getting back to the light weight range with the Steelfiber 95s felt awesome. Contact was a bit more consistent and I could feel the head weight which I enjoy.

Finally on the weights this is a bit of an experiment, but on my irons I really struggle with a toe side miss and an overdraw even on a well struck shot. So to this end I am fairly confident that more weight in the toe will be helpful to straighten things out. I did throw some lead tape on my current irons on the toe to confirm to feel and that was a pleasant experience. That is most of my piecemeal fitting process. Though I think @ChitownM2 brings up a great point that the weights are great but do dramatically increase the options at a fitting so it would be very interesting to see how that club plays out in a true fitting experience without turning it into at 4 hour marathon.

[edingc]

45 minutes ago, ejgaudette said:

Though I think @ChitownM2 brings up a great point that the weights are great but do dramatically increase the options at a fitting so it would be very interesting to see how that club plays out in a true fitting experience without turning it into at 4 hour marathon.

I'm reading all of your fitting experiences in earnest as I think the Edel fitting matrix is a unique challenge for fitters to work with. As I recall from our SMS wedge fittings last season, we all had very different experiences. Mine at Club Champion was probably the least Edel-like - it was just a basic fitting for the most part.

That being said, I was able to tell within a few swings that the weight in toe was best for me. I believe there's something out there from Chris Koske of Edel saying basically the same - it only takes a few swings to see what is best for a particular player.

[GolfSpy AFG]

14 minutes ago, edingc said:

I'm reading all of your fitting experiences in earnest as I think the Edel fitting matrix is a unique challenge for fitters to work with. As I recall from our SMS wedge fittings last season, we all had very different experiences. Mine at Club Champion was probably the least Edel-like - it was just a basic fitting for the most part.

That being said, I was able to tell within a few swings that the weight in toe was best for me. I believe there's something out there from Chris Koske of Edel saying basically the same - it only takes a few swings to see what is best for a particular player.

I'm drafting my intro now so I'll elaborate a bit more in that post, but long story short...I'm relying on the iron fitting I did at Club Champion 6 months ago when I did a full bag fitting, and it was not with an Edel.  I know my iron specs and that's what I ordered; my intent going into this is to experiment heavily with the SMS system (with help from some additional weights) to find the best T-C-H combination.  Frankly, that's going to be a lot of fun, and I think the real value of this test is going to be in digging into just how impactful the different weight configurations can be.

[ACalling]

On 4/15/2023 at 11:23 PM, ChitownM2 said:

Fitting was a bit of a mess actually.  The fitter knew I was coming in solely looking a the SMS irons and I think he did some homework on them on them as I don't believe he was familiar with them beforehand (they didn't even know whether they had the heads when I first called to schedule).  He had come up with a plan to try and determine the best position for the heavy weight by having me make swings with just the 8g weight in each spot with each shaft.  When he handed the club to me the first time I questioned having only 1 weight in and two empty slots but he said it was to exaggerate the affect of the weight and we would add the others back later in the fitting.  I thought it seemed odd, but assumed he was the pro and we proceeded with the fitting (this will be important later).  I tend to have a really low ball flight from coming in too steep so in my previous fittings I'm usually looking at lighter weight higher launching shafts and this fitting was no exception.  We looked at the steelfiber i95 Stiff and the Tour Lite Stiff and I went through each of them trying the weight in each of the 3 spots.  During this phase I was struggling to put good swings on the ball and had a lot of poor strikes.  

We followed that process through and determined that the steelfibers and center weigh position were the best.  We started adding the other weights back in and worked through various options until we arrived at a 2-8-4 (T-C-H) weight configuration and my swings were becoming more consistent.  It was getting close to closing and I could tell he was ready to wrap it up as I was the last customer for the day and I asked to try throwing the 10g weight in and he obliged and I had a few more strikes that might have been my best of the evening with more consistency overall then earlier.  On that he shut the GC Quad down and we went to the front for me to pay for the fitting and write down the final specs.  As I was about to leave I asked him what the final swing weight of the club ended up being and he replied that he didn't know.  We took it back and measured it and it came to D1, which was about 2 points lighter than my gamers that he had measured during warm-ups.  I inquired about what weights it would take to get me up to a D3 to match what I had been use to swinging and so we played around for another 5 min and determined that a 4-10-6 config would put me at like D2.8 which was close enough.  At that point the machines had all been shut down and we were the only 2 left and I had checked my phone to see I had a mini emergency brewing at home so I ended up just leaving.

On the drive home I was thinking about the fitting and the final weight configuration and started doing the math in my head and realized that I had 20g of weight in the head to get me to D3 and that when we were doing the entire shaft selection process I had only 8g weight in the head, which was a 12g difference and about 6 SW points.   Meaning I did the entire shaft selection with the clubhead at a C7 SW, 6 points lighter than I'm accustomed to.  I realized that this could have been a big contributor as to why I was making such poor contact earlier and tried to call them back, but it was now 15 min past close and no one answered so I continued home to deal with my emergency.  I also realized that I never actually took any swings with the club in the final weight configuration that we agreed I should order so after some private discussion with the other testers here I decided that I had to go back.  Fortunately I didn't have any early meetings the next day and was able to go back as soon as they opened and hop on a bay before their schedule filled up for the day.  I hit the steel fiber shaft with the 4-10-6 weight combo and it produced some pretty good swings / strikes, better than any from the night before.  I also gave the Tour Lite another chance with the same weight configuration but the steel fibers still won out so I left and was confident that I had the right setup.

In the end, I think a big part of this was that the fitter was not very familiar with the Edel weight system.  He did make an effort to research them and did have a game plan but I think there was a big flaw with that plan being that he didn't consider what the effects of removing the weights would be on the club swing weight.  I believe this was also exacerbated by the fact that the stock D2 swing weight with the standard 2-8-2 weight configuration is probably based on a 120g+ shaft like the regular KBS Tour or the Dynamic Golf S400.  When you start getting into really light shafts like I was swinging at 95g and you remove the headweights it has a pretty tremendous effect on the final SW.  In the end it didn't end up being a problem, but it certainly could have been had I not been as familiar with swing weights and club building and was able to figure all of this out on my own.  It's certainly something I don't think the average golfer would have picked up on, especially since a majority of them have never been fit to begin with.

On a more general note, one thing I would say is this fitting took a long time.  Since we were limited to the stock options from Edel, I only actually tested out 2 shafts and I knew going in what head I was getting so I went in there thinking it would be quick, but it took awhile to go through and tinker with the weights.  I hit a lot of golf balls in those 90 min.  I do think that this would be a pretty rough process if someone were to go for a truly brand agnostic fitting.  If you were going to hit iron options from Callaway, TM, Mizuno, Srixon, etc and then end up narrowing it down to the Edel heads, I think you would have to be a speed demon to get through it all in the normal time allotted for an iron fitting.  You'd also have to have some pretty incredible stamina to hit that many balls in such a short amount of time.  I probably hit 2 rounds of balls between warm-up and the testing so I couldn't imagine adding in taking swings from several other brands on top of it all.

  

Thas pretty interesting. Sounds like that the changing/rearranging of the weights is good for customization, and you did end up getting the one you wanted. Having to go through so many variations all for small incremental improvements certainly was not a friend for time, and it is great persepctive thinking of someone having to go in for a fitting not set on Edel already and 2 shafts to choose from. 

[ChitownM2]

1 hour ago, ACalling said:

Thas pretty interesting. Sounds like that the changing/rearranging of the weights is good for customization, and you did end up getting the one you wanted. Having to go through so many variations all for small incremental improvements certainly was not a friend for time, and it is great persepctive thinking of someone having to go in for a fitting not set on Edel already and 2 shafts to choose from. 

I do think that my fitter might have over done it and @edingc is correct, for me the general results/effect of moving the weight were pretty consistent regardless of shaft.  If I were to do it again, I'd probably start with big weight in the center and then add the others to get to appropriate swing weight and test all the shafts.  Once I had a shaft selected then start moving the weight to find the optimum location then adjust total weight of head to see if changing SW one way or the other makes an improvement.

I don't think it was necessary to go through each shaft expecting a different result with the weight in different positions.  In hindsight, I probably should have called Edel and asked them about how they're fitting process works just in case the local fitter wasn't as familiar with the product.  

[GolfSpy AFG]

So while waiting anxiously for clubs to test, AKA Christmas in April, I thought I'd share what I have found to be some of the better reviews on Edel irons out there.

TXG did a quality video review of the SMS Irons:

And here's their review of the SMS Pro Irons:

From an article or blog standpoint, PGA Pappas recently put out a review that was surprisingly positive:

http://pgapappas.blogspot.com/2023/04/edel-golf-sms-pro-irons-review.html

And in the "con" department, here's a review that suggested that Edel may be over-promising on some of their claims. From MyGolfSpy of all places...

https://mygolfspy.com/labs/edel-sms-irons-test/

There are several more out there of course but these are the best and most thorough in my opinion.

[CFreddie]

3 minutes ago, Getoffmylawn said:

So while waiting anxiously for clubs to test, AKA Christmas in April, I thought I'd share what I have found to be some of the better reviews on Edel irons out there.

TXG did a quality video review of the SMS Irons:

And here's their review of the SMS Pro Irons:

From an article or blog standpoint, PGA Pappas recently put out a review that was surprisingly positive:

http://pgapappas.blogspot.com/2023/04/edel-golf-sms-pro-irons-review.html

And in the "con" department, here's a review that suggested that Edel may be over-promising on some of their claims. From MyGolfSpy of all places...

http://pgapappas.blogspot.com/2023/04/edel-golf-sms-pro-irons-review.html

There are several more out there of course but these are the best and most thorough in my opinion.

Really great review - def checked this out when the test was announced.  Thanks for sharing!

[Triple_Putt]

Morning everyone! About to head out to play(unfortunately not with the Edels yet) but threw up my intro and also my fitting experience! Feel free to ask any questions and i'll answer between holes.  Have a great day everyone!

Intro and Fitting Experience!

[BKervin]

On 4/11/2023 at 4:16 AM, Triple_Putt said:

Introduction 4/18/23

Hello everyone!  I'm extremely grateful to My Golf Spy and to Edel for allowing me to test these beautiful irons! As most can tell I'm pretty new to the site, even though I lurked through google for many, many years looking for the ever elusive missing puzzle piece to my 100+ score golf outings.  The idea of testing something this important was merely a fantasy when I put my name in the virtual hat, but I am very ready to follow through and provide a test and review that hopefully people can relate to, learn from, or at the very least enjoy. 

  I have lived here in Connecticut for my entire life and have been playing golf for nearly 15 years at this point. I played on our golf team in high school, and have played as time allows while working two jobs the last 10 years. In the past 18 months I have started a new career at a very large transportation company, and while I have lost my weekends off and usually end up working night time hours, this has surprisingly led to me spending A LOT more time on my golf game and a lot more time out on the course.  Going from basically no practice and hitting the course once or twice a month and still continuing to shoot 100+ every round, to now practicing weekly and playing 18 holes at least once a week spring through fall, I have been able to bring my handicap way down and have shot as low as 86 at the end of last summer.  Even with our shortened season up here in the northeast, there has been an influx of indoor simulator venues so my clubs still get a chance to be swung year round, even when the snow is on the ground. 

My current set of irons are probably clubs that nobody has seen out on the course in well over a decade, ping i3’s….. A hand-me-down set from my uncle when I joined the golf team in high school over 12 years ago.  While I do truly love these clubs; they reward you for hitting the ball well, and punish you harshly if you step out of line.  I have tried to play with other clubs over the years, but just never felt comfortable to dive in and invest in the latest and greatest.  I’m hoping these Edel’s will provide the forgiveness I'm looking for, along with the ability to adjust for my game, rather than adjusting myself to the club.  The testing will determine that! 

I honestly had only really glanced at Edel as a brand prior to this, and didn’t even know they already had a full set of wedges until I started researching their website after the Testing was announced on here.  After that I dove into the reviews on this site for those wedges to see how the Swing Match System was received, and from the glowing reviews of the system itself, as well as the thoughts on how high quality the Edel product was, it certainly ramped up the feeling of wanting to test out these SMS Irons even more.   

Feel free to ask any questions and I'd be happy to answer the best I can!  

 

Cheers

The Fitting

The closest shop to me that had the SMS head to be fit with was my nearest Club Champion.  I had never been fit for any clubs before, so I was nervous from the moment I called to schedule through the time I walked in the door with my clubs a few short days later.   My fitter was a very nice guy and had me warm up, which kicked off the numerous mishits and general horror that is my golf game.  He was very kind… “Believe me, I've seen much worse” and slowly but surely I started actually getting some decent hits with my current set to see where I was and we could move forward.  A few minutes with the tape measure and he figured +¼” would be about where I need to be.  I had a chicken scratch list of the stock shafts that Edel has available to order with, and we started down the line with what he thought would be best for me.  After working through both the Steelfiber, and most of the lighter weight side of the Steel shaft options, 3 shafts stood out as far as dispersion and length.  

The KBS Tour R 110g, the Modus3 Tour 120 R, and then the Project X LZ 6.0.  The Steelfiber shafts just did not seem to be right for me, and while I actually had the most distance with them, my left to right was much wider, nearly double.  I’ll take accuracy over distance any day.

Once settled on the KBS Tours, we set out to see if I needed to adjust any of the lies or loft. After some swinging he recommended I order them standard and get some time under them and decide from there if any tweaks should be made.  It seems like I could benefit slightly from some upright Lie, but I honestly was too inconsistent with my swing to really nail it down; something I really need to work on.  We also did some experimenting with the Swing Match Weight System, which is obviously the huge attraction to these Edel Irons.  The stock 3 weights are from Heel, Center, Toe 2,8,2 grams.  We started by pushing the 8 grams out the toe and I could actually feel a difference! It was shocking! Even though the head weight is the same it certainly feels heavier on the swing.  Felt like I was swinging harder naturally but accuracy diminished a tad(again very limited testing, much more to be done when they are actually in my hands!).  After that we moved the weight to the heel, and it definitely felt lighter on the swing, and I found it more neutral and I was making great contact almost every single time.  This is where we pretty much ran out of time, so that is most likely the starting point with the weights when these beauties arrive.  Overall the ease of changing out the weights make me think that setting up the weight for each individual club wouldn't take much time at all out on the range.  Moving the weights around, even being only 8grams, changes how it feels instantly to swing, I really was shocked and doubted if my relatively unskilled game would be able to detect such a thing. How wrong I was and now im counting down the days until these arrive!

Once again feel free to ask any questions and I will answer the best I can!  I really wish I grabbed some photos but after a rough start on just warming up I focused on trying not to waste any of the fitters time and get the work done. 

Good luck with the irons!

Looking forward to reading more in your experience 

[GolfSpy AFG]

My intro post is up!

Please fire away with questions or comments!

[sirchunksalot]

Great intros @Getoffmylawn and @Triple_Putt! The SMS Edel offers is a very interesting piece of fitting technology and I'm going to be interested in how they work out for you. 

[GolfSpy_KFT]

47 minutes ago, Getoffmylawn said:

My intro post is up!

Please fire away with questions or comments!

Awesome intro, @Getoffmylawn & @Triple_Putt! Can't wait to follow along and see what you guys find out in your testing!

[hartrick11]

1 hour ago, Getoffmylawn said:

My intro post is up!

Please fire away with questions or comments!

Great start! Super interesting that they still use tip weights vs. just using the plugs to dial in SW. Did they get into why they do that?

[TSauer]

Just finished getting through the intros from y'all, great job! I have always been intrigued by Edel equipment for some reason and I'm not sure what it is, especially since the lefty items are pretty much non-existent from them. My guess is the looks and the rarity of seeing them in someone's bag. Nonetheless, I'll be following along with the updates just in case that blue moon does rise and left hand becomes an option.

[fixyurdivot]

Fantastic start to this product test!  Some interesting fitting experiences too. I dunno about the rest of the forum but I'm having a hard time keeping up with all the various tests going on.  Not complaining mind you, just saying. 

[Vegan_Golfer_PNW]

Good luck testers.

@Getoffmylawn, your setup is going to be really good for testing, but also don't forget on course. I wouldn't be surprised if one config works for indoors (mats) and the other better on the course due to turf interaction. I could be wrong.Also very interesting about them using tip weights and not the heavier weights. Maybe they wanted the bigger weight delta between the removable weight to affect CG and feel more? I know with my current MOI set, i believe their are tip weights in and I noticed I am more in the heel than I was before I got them MOI matched. Would be curious if their 12g weight in a 4-4-12 setup would be different than say 2-2-8. Who really knows.

@Triple_Putt, KBS tours are awesome shafts. I hope they suit you well on the course.