I'm in the market for new irons and am trying to decide between custom irons or off the shelf ones. I have to admit that despite what i read on this forum I'm still leaning towards a higher end set from taylor made or mizuno.

I got fitted a few years back from a local clubmaker and I was turned off by how much their fitting relies strictly on my feel. They emphasised the importance of shaft frequencies and consistent swingweights yet when we tested these using a variety of clubs i rely couldn't tell the difference among many of them after we rejected the most obvious bad matches. Although my swing is consistent which helps the accuracy of this type of testing the typical amateur's swing is not. This coupled with limited feel makes this fitting process seem a little dubious. I'm not going to argue the importance of these aspects in a clubs design but this type of fitting process strikes me as unreliable. Besides, is a $1000 pair of clubs off the shelf really going to be that inconsistent in this respect?

Another consideration is price and by my account custom clubs cost well over $1000 when it is all said and done, so no advantage there.

That leaves me with shaft length, lie angle and feel to help me make the decision. In this respect i would say that 70-80% of the body types out there could be happy with the clubmaker's standard, including myself. Some impact tape and a few demos at the range to confirm and the decision seems straigthforward to me.

But I'd love to hear from others and maybe an expert or two since I'm really not into this techno stuff that much.