I have a friend who is a very good, long time player. His current shaft is curly maple, and he loves it. He told me that he once played with a BEM shaft and liked it too. Claimed either of them played better than any straight grained he had ever used. Anyone have experience with these shafts? Just curious.
Curly and BEM shafts
- Thread starter Charlie Edwards
- Start date
I have hit with curly shafts that played soft and others that hit harder than most maple. It is just like regular maple, it will vary from piece to piece. The shafts with tiny birdseyes play okay and can often be found in tighter grain pieces than most other maple, so that might increase the stiffness, but the shafts with large eyes would tend to feel like lumps going through your fingers. With curly maple you need to make sure you are using the hard curl variety as the soft curl would be junk for shafts.
When I was experimenting with different configurations of my ferrule-less shaft I used them all. There was not a noticeable increase in performance from species to species. They all performed adequately, but the straight grained Maple had an edge.