While driving my wife's 97 the last few weeks I have noticed some brief stuttering right when I pull away from a stop. Just a real quick hesitation and it pulls fine after that. It almost feels like a missfire. Power seems normal and it pulls just fine all the way to redline with no additional missing or popping or anything. During normal cruzing above 2000rpm it runs fine (no reason to cruise below that in any case).

I checked the plugs real quick after work yesterday and they looked on the hot side with a white electrode. No indication of knock, but it looks a little on the lean or hot side of ideal. It had only a little carbon deposits just above the threads, so no major carbon deposits from a lot of missfiring or running rich. I checked all plug wires and everything looks OK. The wires were replaced less than 10k miles ago.

If I bog it down in higher gears I can get it to stutter between 1200-1700 rpm and then it picks up fine. It is only under load because if I free rev it in nuetral it runs just fine.

Over the last two weeks it is gradually getting a little worse, not bad yet, but I am a little concerned since this one is my daily right now untill the 91 turbo install is done and tested.

 

I had a similar issue even after replacing wires, one of the bolts for my coil pack had gotten loose and would allow some stuttering. It's a free fix, so hopefully that's it.

 

I checked all the wires and coil pack to make sure nothing was loose. All coil bolts were tight too.

 

My 01 does this.

But it has the factory COP's. Which i think may be MY problem.
The issue is the same as you describe though. Low RPM under load, between 1000-2000rpm.