Custom Built CRAZY EXPENSIVE TAKOMO Golf Clubs (does it make a difference?)

so in front of me I have a nearly $1,600 set of Tacomo irons these 301 MBS cost almost ,000 more than what they are on Taco's website through customization upgrades builds these things are some baller Tacomo irons and you're probably asking yourself well why the heck would you do that Andrew and let me just tell you it's been a journey but we got to go back to the start we got to go find out what even compelled me to do this so this journey technically started 2 years ago 2023 when I first got my hands on a set of 301 MV irons from Tacomo I was so impressed I made a video or two about those irons and those videos and shorts still exist I had High Praise nothing but High Praise because I was just like wow you could get performance that was comparable and sometimes better than what oems were offering for half the price and by the Numbers alone you couldn't tell the difference and I was impressed numbers wise these were performing marginally better than the irons I had been playing for a year or two so I put them in the bag and then I tested other Tacomo clubs wedges Fairway Woods the driving iron High Praise again because it was like I've never seen performance for half the price like this I was really really impressed but the other clubs didn't didn't fit me didn't work for me I was lucky KBS tour one of the two shaft options at the time was the shaft I played so these irons were in the bag and I was enjoying them probably golfing every 3 to four weeks not a ton of golf not competing not practicing a lot from time to time I just started to notice the inconsistencies especially in the middle of the bag the 678 iron I would hit some shots that were just like struck really well and a strange flight or a really short like just fall out of the sky go really high fall of the sky just whatever it it it bothered me from time to time but it's not like I was playing for high stakes where it meant the world just chocked it up to something and I just kind of proceeded but then I started testing and reviewing more DTC golf clubs here on the channel and some were just like Tacomo a sha or two option but some had a lot more to choose from some had fitting options some had a better demo program and like a shaft Matrix so you could really get a DTC set of golf clubs that were dialed and fit to you and that that really started to open my eyes to maybe a bit of a wear Tacomo lack a little bit but I'll say it again I was lucky KBS tour worked for me perfectly before Tacomo irons and worked for me well in Tacomo irons but if I was a dynamic gold player if I played Project X if I played nip and modus kind of so if I wanted to really optimize these irons I would have had to like build them and I never wanted to go down that path because I just wasn't that concerned about it time passes testing more golf clubs and I'm just kind of like seeing the Tacomo bubble grow grow grow every YouTuber uses them some now own part of the company or shareholders and it was just kind of like but are they using the Tacomo irons you can get off the website that was always the question I had and I knew some of them definitely weren't there's videos about their builds that you can watch they weren't options that Tacomo could sell smoking mirrors is a little bit of the term I'll use like it's it's one thing but it's not and I was just like I wish they had some custom fitting I wish they were just kind of stepping it closer because they want to be the big player in the game well offer a little bit more and then I was served at Tacomo ad in January late January about custom fitting about their online custom fitting and I was like whoa whoa whoa awesome let's see what this is about I stepped through it it's a little disappointed it was pretty generic just like whatever basic questions about you as a golfer and then I was waiting for you to input a video because some other DTC brands that I've seen you send a video and then some AI or a human being will look at your swing and kind of get an idea of maybe what Li angle could work for you and what shaft profile could work for you that didn't exist it was just generic questions about your game and then it's going to spit out to you what Tacomo set is best for you then I looked and I was like oh you can customize because in the ad the guys using SE tapers I was like I didn't know they offered SE tapers yeah you can customize there's a few more customization there's a bit more of a shaft Matrix so I click on that and it's like okay cool there's a couple more little bit deeper into the KBS realm and a graphite Shaft or two for only like a hundred bucks more but still nippin Dynamic gold Project X like there's still a lot of golf shaft fitting customization that doesn't exist so it prompted me to make this set right here but before I did that I needed to get the data in the numbers of the KBS tour of the stock shafts that I had so let's see what I got okay so all the Tacomo irons are marked up ready for the most accurate data I can get from IM mini the process is five shots with each one four iron up to pitching wedge with my stock KBS tour 13 x's in them if I miss hit a shot if I totally whiff it I'll do it again but it's five shots not five good shots but I don't want a really bad one to skew the data so it's five shots let's see the consistency the performance of these irons straight from the factory pitching wedge pretty solid we're kind of a little inconsistent with carry yardage I mean like I said they weren't all struck perfectly but to go from 132 up to 142 it's a a big dispersion and like they weren't like turned over pulled because the spin didn't really come down on the 142 versus the 132 so when you look at the spin we have a range of 500 RPM and that's kind of like that's okay obviously five shots you'd love to see it really tight the RPMs within a few hundred but I feel like the four to 500 range is pretty good anything over 500 now we're sneaking into kind of inconsistency with what um the club is delivering we look at N9 iron pretty good and we look at the spin we see a spin range of 730 RPM we're sneak leing into a bit of inconsistency with what the clubs are producing we get into the eight iron pretty tight here 10 yards you're kind of seeing the same like there's 8 to 10 yards across to five shots struck relatively well but really nice tighter 400 RPM spin range just good numbers we look at the seven iron this one was really good a really tight seven yards 250 RPM change though across those five shots the seven iron definitely produced the the performance that they're marketed to produce in the players blade in the 301 MB really really good and we go into the six iron and this is where it gets wonky a little bit more variety we see 12 yards in difference and we see 835 RPM in change little bit more inconsistent and that again is kind of what I remembered specifically through those clubs not as consistent as I would want them to be but again pretty solid numbers five iron quite good 550 RPM change in the spin pretty these were a shaft that worked for me they were irons that worked for me but I just found them a little bit inconsistent and I would have wanted a bit more consistency from them when I played them and then revisiting them over a year later see it and then the four iron was like magic sometimes when I test clubs on here four irons are magic for me and this four iron was like wow the dispersion was so tight 250 RPM spin change in a four iron the carry is so good just really liked the four iron when it came to the SAT that I had the KBS tour half in over standard standard Li standard Loft pretty good with the four iron so now that I had tested them stock from the website if you will I had to build out this premium set my friends at us mamia sent me a set of Dart V's for this video I reached out to them and I said hey I've got an idea can we really dial in a set of tacos with a really really great shaft so the dart V it's a premium graphite shaft coming in at roughly $75 a shaft from Florida pitching wedge so there you have an additional $525 that these irons would cost on top of the 650 got a grip that's like 15 bucks but I had to get this built so I gave these to my trusted friend Club Builder fitter Brian L roach here in Jacksonville to build them for me and what a good Builder would charge you for this process is probably in the $35 to $40 range per Club maybe get a little bit lower at let's say an Edwin Watts or you're paying more at like a club champion a spec a more premium Builder but like the $35 to $40 range is what you would expect for a build per Club to kind of customize a set of clubs so that's an additional $385 so now you know we're closing in on roughly $600 before tax for these irons but when Brian built them he had some interesting things that he found out about the clubs when he was going through the weights and going through the LI angle so I'll let Brian kind of take it over a little bit here let me get a quick Builder note here for you so current specs with the KBS 130x half inch long and your standard that's key because you know these swing weights if this was like a midsize grip uh these swing weights would come out a little bit different but your standard lampin utx grip I just wanted to point out see the difference in the four iron and five iron that is the absolute worst tolerance I would I would let something leave my shop 02 okay that could be the difference of a grip weight something along those lines maybe the way the glue dried I don't know I'm just saying I'll give myself that that is unacceptable and then when we go into our nine iron of pitching wedge that those are very far away from each other man so we want this to be perfect we want everything we when we're hitting our four iron we want it to feel like our n iron when we're swinging it we don't want to have to adjust throughout the set so this a pretty low or poor build tolerance in my opinion coming from Tacomo the swing weights all over the place like that's not good let's call a spade a spade it's not good but it's a drop shipped Golf Club so what can you expect really who builds them how are they built are they pre-built we don't know these things but to see the swing weight vary as much as it does throughout the bag is going to make the clubs feel different throughout the bag and where we see a big pronounced kind of wonky bit is through 678 think about when I played with these clubs I always felt that area a bit of a struggle my testing the seven iron was fantastic but the six and the eight were not good maybe it has to do with the fact that the swing weight in there like the the flow is just terrible just terrible I'm not mentioning words call a spade a spade when you want players blades you want a level of consistency in how they're built and how they're delivered to you as a final product so then he pops the heads off and the raw swing weights are strange from a club Builder standpoint if you want good quality this is not a good place to start okay yes we're ripping them apart we had no choice of what our head weights were this is just what they sent with the set that you got but even when they built them they didn't even build them at least to my standard so in my eyes they didn't build them properly at all you look at this man you got your six and four iron with the lightest raw swing weights why aren't why aren't they the same built swing weight over here like why would why they just stop adding weight or adding glue to this one I don't know what it was why are the nineiron and pitching wedge heavier than everything else by a full point when your eight iron is your heaviest head you look at that e6.5 look it's going to go down when we put a grip on all of that but nonetheless the whole set needs to be built to that so they all match and to me that's very possible so the fact that we got these numbers over here it's wild very strange and again it maybe speaks a little bit to that inconsistency that I felt just just food for thought but very interesting things if you're looking for performance trusted premium players irons so he pops the shafts back in same length half inch over standard he works to get all the swing weights to d4.5 so now they're going to feel the same but then he he Li angles them I didn't play a ton like when I was playing full-time had forged irons your Li angles can get out of whack every six month it depend on how much you hit especially if you're hitting off mats like I didn't I play a lot I didn't practice a lot to have the LI angles really Bend out of shape because of use the LI angles were all over the place so it just kind of speaks so that build quality control that's going to produce inconsistent shots ball flight performance Callis beta Spade so Brian gets the L angles back swing weights back they look so cool they feel so cool obviously it's a shaft that I've not used so I needed a bit of time to kind of climatize I had a couple 20 30 minute practice sessions with them and then it was time to get the numbers and let's see does fine-tuning it spending this much money on it to make super cool tacos do they perform better let's find out so much like the other one we'll kind of go through the bag and you see kind of what you would expect like the performan is they're still good irons don't get me wrong the the gapping just stays the same I didn't really notice much difference when I was hitting them the feel definitely felt tighter cuz I again throughout the bag you have the same swing weight it's going to feel better and after you know a couple hours hitting Dart bees through my warm-ups and my testing gosh it's a it's a Straight Shaft it's a really Straight Shaft so we'll go through Club to Club real quick and then we'll kind of go Club to Club pitching wedge you only see about four yards difference in carry like that's what you want spin change 475 kind of the top end of of good slightly better but that tighter carry is huge we go into nine iron we see four yards again little bit more spin variety but not bad we're not getting into the 6 7 800 RPMs variance throughout five shots 560 tighter Spin and Tighter carry eight iron I mean the carry was was crazy consistent the flight was crazy consistent spin variance 500 but you're starting to see a trend it's just Tighter and carry and Tighter window of spin that these irons are producing seven iron again six yards like we haven't seen 8 n 10 yards yet we had already seen that with the stock website offerings 440 yards variance of spin tighter carry tighter Spin Six iron here we get into like eight yards 340 RPM no change of spin the six iron before was like 800 so just the L angle and the swing weight being fixed changes so much five iron 400 RPM spin variants and then carry five yards just tighter like it's I I'm I sound like a broken record it's tighter carry and Tighter spin dispersion obviously four iron with the Tacomo as it were was just a dream we see a little bit more spin variety 475 but that's still really good for a 4 iron and then carry we see nine yards but that's definitely in large part to kind of like hit a higher fade a little bit more just tighter tighter carry tighter spin dispersion but let's look at them head to-head pitching wedge we see pretty similar across the board the thing that I like is the spin and the launch is is is good the spins a little bit down with the newer one but the peak height just slightly lower so it's like more of a flighted wedge I mean those circles the same it's a pitching wedge it shouldn't be super off nine iron kind of the same couple yards difference but again the peak height with with the dart V's just better a wee bit more spin but a lower flight like that's more controllable that's more consistent tighter Circle tighter carry and Tighter dispersion we go into the eight iron pretty similar carry spin a little bit less with the new setup slightly lower but I'm still hitting the what I need just on the lower end of perfect spin the circles are the Y angle on the swing weight was fixed like look what you see going to the seven iron obviously previous one was so impressive but the new one is pretty good too a wee bit further pretty tight Circle as well Apex is actually a bit higher which is good as we get higher in the bag we want a little bit higher flight with appropriate span appropriate carryer so it's actually carrying a little bit more appropriately to what I hit a 7 iron I hit a seven iron kind of around the 182 183 6 iron look at at this circle like it was the most wonky one I ever felt on the golf course and we look at that Circle the blue is the old the green is the new better swing weight better L angle just a better performing golf club numbers wise little bit more carry but this again you get a little bit higher spin still really good like they're I really like them they're just performing better five irons pretty much the same but you see the new one just a tighter carry dispersion spins the exact same but the Apex is a little bit higher again longer irons a little bit higher spinning appropriately launching appropriately getting you better carry more tighter carry it's what you want at the top of the bag four iron obviously I mean that was special how I hit the four iron dispersion wise but if we look at the carry it's roughly the same in the new one a wee bit further but we saw it kind of consistently little bit higher better Apex launch spins really really good they're just performing better and yes part of it can be the shaft absolutely a slightly better tune fit shaft yes but they've been built properly when you get them from the website it's it's evident the quality control in the build is not there so if you're a player and you want premium players blades you want to get these and and be like your favorite YouTubers you got to bring them to a builder to get them spec out and dial because if you want performance and consistency off the rack from the website I'm I struggle to believe that you'll get it over time if you're a new golfer just get in like my nephew my brother-in-law I'm having him get his kids Tacomo irons because for like 500 bucks to get a nice looking pretty good performing and like a cool iron it's amazing so if you're like in getting into the game or you want to kind of be more cost efficient yeah they're really good irons they're going to perform fine but if you want the Blaze the the the sexy blades that perform so well and are half the price of the oems you're not you're not getting it straight from the factory I'm very sorry we saw it in this the build quality leaves a lot to be desired so yes you can get them and then you can bring them to a builder but that Builder is going to charge you to optimize them so your $650 clubs even if you're not changing the shaft what that Builder May charge you to lie Loft and especially swing weight cuz to swing weight got to take the shaft out so let's say 40 bucks a club so you've got your $650 set of irons that you now want to assure or performing and our spec and our built properly you're paying an additional $350 $400 for it so take that for what it's worth like they're $ 650 but if you want to get the true OEM performance you got to pay more to get them dialed and then if it's the wrong shaft for you you're all of a sudden encroaching on 1 12200 1300 the same same price for clubs from tailor made mauno Callaway ping that when they build them they make sure as Brian said that it's within a point when it comes to lingle when it comes to swing weight so it's been a journey like I said a lot to take in I hope you enjoy this video I really enjoy doing this I really like these irons I feel like I could play with these irons Brian built me a baller set of irons us Mia that Dart V shaft impressive impressive stuff let me know down below do you have tacos do you have you customized them what's that experience been like what did it cost you and we'll see you in the next video