I have a Maltby KE4-ST hybrid that I bought a couple of years ago b/c I loved the look of it.....it looks like an old fashioned fairway wood from the 1920's.....pointy toe, etc. But for some reason, I never was able to hit it very well, so it's been sitting in my bag of castoff clubs in the basement. I decided to try to resurrect it recently, but again, hit good shots and bad with it. In looking at my Maltby catalog the other night, I noticed that the specs
matched the loft, lie, and weight of Maltby 9-woods exactly, a couple of degrees flatter than most normal hybrids....
So, I contacted the company to see if they could bend the hosel to make the clubhead more upright (I'm pretty tall, and play with upright clubs). They responded that the clubhead would break if they tried to bend it......back to the drawing board. So then I reasoned, why not build it to the same specs as a 9 wood then, since that will make it longer than I was playing it as a hybrid? Finally, I decided to take it one step further, and install a .335 wood shaft, since, for all practical purposes, this is a 9 wood, masquerading as a hybrid! I happened to have a shim made for that purpose, so I tip trimmed the shaft for a 9 wood, slipped on the shim, and glued it all up.
Tried it out during my round yesterday, and believe it or not, it was GREAT!! I hit three greens with it, used it to lay up once on a par 5, and was really pleased with the flight and trajectory! My next step is to take it to the range to really dial in the distance it will go reliably, but it seems to fit in nicely, between my 7 wood and my longest iron.
For once, one of my hair-brained experiments paid off!!
https://www.golfworks.com/ke4-st-h-hybrids/p/ma0253/