structured/shaped polys playtest

[fgs]

https://skydrive.live.com/redir.aspx...5AB811974E!122

i have not had much experience with structured or shaped strings, as i am (still) of the opinion that 95% of the spin you manage to put on the ball comes from your technique, maybe 3% from the stringpattern and the rest, which is only 2% in my take comes from the string. i only had two experiences with structured strings before and the shape wore down within 30-45 minutes. so, maybe wrongly, i assumed that it is not worth the hassle. as i’m reading more and more about “monster-spin-strings” (from boardmembers and not from the advertising and promotion the companies run!), i have decided to give it a more thorough try and find out what all this buzz is about. about half the strings mentioned are already “in house” and over the coming weeks and months i will be purchasing the ones that are still missing.

i play the strings in my slightly modded mantis 300 frames (100 sq.inches, 70 RA unstrung, 16 x 19 pattern, leaded to balance point at 34cm which would be about 1pt hl, 335g static, with leather grip, no overgrip). my reference set-up is mantis power poly 17 in the mains at 22kg (approx. 48lbs.) and mantis power synthetic 17 in the crosses at 21kg (approx. 46lbs.). this is a hybrid i have played for the most part of the last 12 months, which i enjoy thoroughly. i am a quite heavy topspin hitter, two handed backhand, but i do also play quite frequently slices (one handed) and dropshots. i’m 46, playing competitively in my age group and have been around the courts for 40 years now.
upon "recalibration" i have gone down in tensions as well (see post #61) -the reference set-up is mantis power poly at 21kg (46lbs) and mantis comfort synthetic at 21kg (46lbs).

the data extracted above is about the strings i want to playtest in a hybrid set-up with the mantis power synthetic. i will adjust tensions slightly on those strings that are known to have a bigger stabilization loss, but that will be no more than 0.5kg (1lbs). there are a few “mismatches” between the diameters i will test and the data on twu, simply because the data for the diameters i will play have not been determined or published (yet). i also have some strings that do not appear on twu as they are not sold by tw, naturally there are no data available on those. the data refer to medium tensions as i have described above and medium swing speed, as i think that compared to the top level of the game, i’m having a rather medium speed in the mean time.

my usual time frame with a set-up is for about 8-10 hitting hours, depending on the ratio of practice (more intensive) vs. match play (less intensive) i can get up to 12 hitting hours of a set. the mantis power poly has been among the very few polys that have not gone dead on me within this time frame.

i will play the strings till they break (after all this is the only way to determine durability), and besides gradings from 1 (very bad) to 10 (very good) i will also try to describe the hitting experience.

64/70 - genesis twisted razor 1.27 / mantis comfort synthetic 1.30 http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/showp...&postcount=118
63/70 - mantis power polyester 1.25 / mantis comfort synthetic 1.30 http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/showp...8&postcount=76
63/70 - tecnifibre ruff code 1.25 / mantis comfort synthetic 1.30 http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/showp...5&postcount=82
59/70 - solinco tour bite 1.25 / mantis comfort synthetic 1.30 http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/showp...&postcount=126
58/70 - pro's pro blackout 1.24 / mantis comfort synthetic 1.30 http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/showp...7&postcount=81
58/70 - tecnifibre black code 1.24 / mantis comfort synthetic 1.30 http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/showp...5&postcount=91
56/70 - weiss cannon black5edge 1.24 / mantis comfort synthetic 1.30 http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/showp...&postcount=127
55/70 - tyger rough poly 1.25 / mantis comfort synthetic 1.30 http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/showp...&postcount=134
53/70 - genesis typhoon 1.26 / mantis comfort synthetic 1.30 http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/showp...&postcount=122
53/70 - gamma moto 1.29 (lime) / mantis comfort synthetic 1.30 http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/showp...&postcount=135
51/70 - kirschbaum black shark 1.25 / mantis comfort synthetic 1.30 http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/showp...&postcount=133
43/70 - solinco revolution 1.25 / solinco tru-feel 1.30 http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/showp...7&postcount=60





polyfibre black venom rough 1.25mm
i have started the test series with the polyfibre black venom rough which had a good two hours of practice today and will be seeing a “real” opponent tomorrow. it was a quite enjoyable ride and i’m confident about the game tomorrow, in spite of being a new string. plays quite close to my go-to setup, so there’s really no big need to adapt. this is particularly weird when you look at twu’s stiffness figures and energy return figures, which should have the mantis power poly and the polyfibre black venom almost at opposite ends.

[fgs]

i'm now well into five hitting hours with the set-up and it has been strung about a week ago. i can't feel any tension drop so far, the stringbed still behaves as on the first outing three days ago. i played about 4 hours light practice sessions and two rather short matches (less than an hour for a double bagel in singles and a doubles we won in two short sets).

the structure starts to wear down but i still get good action on the ball, the kickers have been jumping up high. the combination is really very touchy - i played some really wicked droppers. i have the feeling that i get my topspins dipping a little bit more than with my regular set-up.
i'll report back on tension maintenance and durability and how the playability stays over the time span, but so far it has been a really enjoyable ride, as i would have "suspected" from a soft string. what is positive about it is that i have passed the five hours mark without the "second" drop in tension, as i have experienced with the other "soft" strings (isospeed baseline, isospeed pulse, kirschbaum pro line II - which admittedly occured around the 7hrs mark!).

[rodrigoamaral]

Originally Posted by fgs

i'm now well into five hitting hours with the set-up and it has been strung about a week ago. i can't feel any tension drop so far, the stringbed still behaves as on the first outing three days ago. i played about 4 hours light practice sessions and two rather short matches (less than an hour for a double bagel in singles and a doubles we won in two short sets).
the structure starts to wear down but i still get good action on the ball, the kickers have been jumping up high. the combination is really very touchy - i played some really wicked droppers. i have the feeling that i get my topspins dipping a little bit more than with my regular set-up.
i'll report back on tension maintenance and durability and how the playability stays over the time span, but so far it has been a really enjoyable ride, as i would have "suspected" from a soft string. what is positive about it is that i have passed the five hours mark without the "second" drop in tension, as i have experienced with the other "soft" strings (isospeed baseline, isospeed pulse, kirschbaum pro line II - which admittedly occured around the 7hrsmark!).

You are making me really want try the venom rough..may have to pull the trigger this week

[fgs]

by the end of this week, after another two hitting sessions i can tell more.

i have learned to be patient in my assessments. i have come across strings that played incredibly well for the first three-four hours and then developed into a complete catastrophy, losing all the resiliency and becoming not even a rocket launcher but having gone completely dead. while i still am of the opinion that those strings are exceptional for a player with a much smaller time window (or one who could afford to restring every 3-4 hours), i have to look after myself and basically my son (who's 12 and promising), and we both have definitely longer time windows (his will definitely go down as he gets older).

and i have another lot of strings to test, but by coincidence i seem to have chosen to start with one that has the potential to be outstanding. if it only doesn't go dead - so far no signs in this direction, but who knows. i have read what others have commented (for instance parasailing) and really hope this does not happen. it has been a very enjoyable hit so far and i truly wish it to continue.

what i found amazing nevertheless is that the figures tw-university provided for the regular balck venom and the mantis power poly are almost at the opposite ends. take stiffness for the black venom at 189 as opposed to the mantis at 241 or energy return for the black venom at 85.6% and for the mantis at 90.8%, both at medium tensions and medium swingspeed. when playing you don't really feel it at all, in the sense that the mantis feels much softer, almost comparably with the black venom.

of course, i hybrid it, and the crosses i use do soften up the stringbed a bit, but then it's the same crosses on both.

regarding energy return - i'm getting about the same lenghth on the balls without having to adjust at all. remember that i got into an official match with this string after only two hours of light practice (with my son), as i felt completely confident and had no need to change anything, like putting more spin on the ball to keep it in court, etc.

there has to be something in the dynamic behaviour of these strings that either can't be measured or nobody has come up with the idea of a measurement. for instance the luxilon adrenaline, a string i also like and have played a while (not much, because i find it too stiff for my son), has lower stiffness readings than the mantis, but plays much stiffer, even in the 1.20mm diameter i have tried.

[pepka]

You're going full poly or still doing MCS x?

[fgs]

i'm doing mantis POWER synthetic crosses, always strung at 21kg. it's the cross string i have mostly played the past year, so that i'm more used to it. i love the mcs, as quite often stated, but i'm too lazy to string after every 6-7 hrs.

[pepka]

^ cool. I'll be checking this thread often

[fgs]

i'm through with this string after approx. 12 hitting hours. i've strung it up on may 16th and the string was still playable until it broke. there was also a very hot and humid day where i wished i had strung it 0.5kg higher than i did.

i do really like this string - period.

on a scale from 1(very bad) to 10(very good) i'd rate it as follows:
power - 9
control - 9
touch - 9
tension maintenance - 9
spin - 10
comfort - 10
durability - 9

a really very good string, nice and comfy to play, giving a good blend of power, spin and control and basically coming in a very close second to the mantis power polyester, the latter scoring a little bit different as you can see in my first post.

the profile started to wear down in the 7th-8th hour but spin was still o.k., so the balls were not sailing on me.

[rodrigoamaral]

Originally Posted by fgs

i'm through with this string after approx. 12 hitting hours. i've strung it up on may 16th and the string was still playable until it broke. there was also a very hot and humid day where i wished i had strung it 0.5kg higher than i did.
i do really like this string - period.
on a scale from 1(very bad) to 10(very good) i'd rate it as follows:
power - 9
control - 9
touch - 9
tension maintenance - 9
spin - 10
comfort - 10
durability - 9
a really very good string, nice and comfy to play, giving a good blend of power, spin and control and basically coming in a very close second to the mantis power polyester, the latter scoring a little bit different as you can see in my first post.
the profile started to wear down in the 7th-8th hour but spin was still o.k., so the balls were not sailing on me.

thanks for the full review on the polyfibre black venom rough.. just strung it up and so far, so good!

[fgs]

i think that there is something i forgot to mention - string movement. i am a heavy topspin hitter so basically i have been adjusting strings all my tennis life and it has gotten something that does not bother me a lot. on the other hand i haven't come across any string that does not move at all - the black venom started moving more (not excessively) around the 9 hour mark. this is also the case with the mantis power poly, or with basically any other poly i have played, shaped, structured or plain. the point is that the black venom rough did not lose playability as it started moving around a little bit more and the misalignment was neither excessive nor extreme (two mains almost touching).

i have seen that there are lots of people who regard this as an important point, so i thought it is worth mentioning, even if it does not bother me - at the level it happened! if it would have been extreme i would have mentioned it anyway, because then it interferes with stroking precision and it really becomes an issue.

[john blackman]

Have you tried the Mantis Power Syn. by itself. I like the Mantis Confort but looking for a little more pop and the Power seems like a natural upgrade to me.

Thanks

[fgs]

yes, i know the mantis power syn very well as it is my standard cross string. it is more durable than the comfort syn, due to the different construction, feels a little bit crisper and has more power and control than the comfort syn, but less touch. tension loss is also slightly better, in the sense that the initial tension loss is lower. once stabilized, both strings are outstanding.

personally i'd prefer the comfort syn over the power syn but as i'm not willing to restring every 6-7 hitting hours, i've gone with the power syn.

[fgs]

next up is the oehms black pearl rough extreme 1.23mm, a string i got from 'stringforum' in order to test and file a report. it is a string with a longitudinal profile which is then twisted. strung it up 0.5kg higher and after two hours of light practice i came to the conclusion that i shouldn't have gone higher from my usual 22kg. the comparison is not fair to the black venom rough as there is a huge difference in price, the oehms one retailing in europe for 40 euro/200m reel. the string is stiffer than the polyfibre.

nevertheless i dialled in on the higher stringbed stiffness, get good spin and control, power is good when hitting the sweetspot, on offcentershots i wished i wouldn't have put that 0.5kg on top. the first impression is really good - we'll see how it does on the tension maintenance sector.

the profile does really "shave" the balls, but i don't find that i get more spin with it than i got from the black venom rough, which in turn was somewhat better than the mantis power polyester.

i'm still looking for that "spin-monster" to show up, but i'm sure that in the end it will still be the 95% the player puts in and the material (stick/string/tension) accounting for the remainder.

[fgs]

after about 4 hitting hours the string snapped but not as it happens in most of the cases at the top of the hoop due to a mishit but at the bottom of the hoop. it was not the string i tied the crosses/knots off and i would rather tend to exclude tha probability that i damaged it while clamping it off. the grommet is in perfect shape too, so this is really something that never ever happened to me, nore have i seen happen to others.

i will therefore not give the final marks for this string but after 4 hitting hours (2 light ones practicing with my son, a quick singles with a little more speed on the balls and today a heavy hitting contest with a much younger lad which lasted only for half an hour until the string snapped) i can make the following statements:

power - when hitting the sweetspot it is decent, when hitting slightly offcenter is is below average. most probably will be rated at 7

control - not very much. you have to control your shots with spin but due to the low power level you will likely exaggerate and will start having directional issues. most probably will be rated at 6.

feel - below average. taking into regard that after about 3 hours the string lost a lot of tension and was on the verge of dying, the feel went with it. most probably will be rated at 6.

tension maintenance - below average. there was considerable tension loss after the first two hours of hitting which lead to the control issues described above. most probably will be rated at 5.

spin - not overwhelming. decent amount, maybe slightly more than with a regular poly, but nothing really impressive. most probably will be rated at 8. this is one rating that might be changed because after 3 hitting hours the profile started to wear off in the sweetspot, and the amount of rpms was getting lower. bear in mind that i already said that you have to change your swingpath in order to control the ball with spin, so i'd rather say that the initial "slightly more spin than with a regular poly" comes from this and not from the profile.

comfort - the string, in spite of being quite soft played somewhat hard and gave me slight tension in the wrist (!) - no pain. i usually get problems with the shoulder but this time, probably because of the additional spin needed to control the ball i overdid my wristaction. will most probably be rated at 5.

durability - this is something i cannot estimate else but according to the notching. having gone through about a quarter of the diameter, i would not expect this one to last more than 8-9 hitting hours, which is not really good. the mix i play now (of practice with my son and harder hitting league matches) should get me rather to 10-12 hours.

i will string up the other half left and this time i will string it at 22kg mains, my regular tension. at 22.5 it was rather stiff, so i might go down. i'll report back with my final conclusions.

this string is said to be identical to discho black mamba gear twisted. the only thing i can confirm is that it looks the same and the diameters 1.23 and 1.27 are available from both producers/brands. in europe the price point is identical too, but as long as i have not played them both i will not make any claims about this.

have gone through the second set-up of the 1.23mm gauge after the first one broke. i assume that i somehow got used to it and adjusted, so i will have slightly higher final grades. that is:
power - 7
control - 7
feel - 7
tension maintenance - 6
spin - 8
comfort - 7
durability - 7,
giving an overall of 49 points.

i must admit that i was hoping for a better performance. i am perfectly aware that this is basically a cheap string, selling for 40 euro/200m reel here n europe, but according to some reviews i read on the stringforum i was quite keen to try it out. it does not blend well with my playing style, as i do hit excentric and therefore i need what "torres" calls a linear response. i need a string that still gets some juice on the ball, CONTROLLABLE!!! juice, when hitting in the upper third of the stringbed, and this one does not deliver.

the profile wearing down pretty quickly is also an issue. i have experienced this with the other strings as well, but not after such a short time.

[fgs]

i have completed the report on the oehms string, i have basically tested the 1.23mm and the 1.27mm diameters, the thicker one having basically worse grades in every aspect with the exception of durability, so that i decided not to mention it separately in the survey.

next up is the blackout from pro's pro, a pentagonally shaped black string sporting a 1.24mm diameter. stringing was no problem and it does really feel quite crisp. i have so far played a doubles match with it and i feel much better with it than with the oehms strings. we'll see how it performs in the "long run".

[J_aces]

I'm just curious as to what level player you are?

[fgs]

i am not familiar with the ntrp level and in the mean time i'm moving towards 47, but in my younger years i have played in the second division in austria and have been amongst the top 100 (in austria obviously!). last year i have won the +45 nationals in romania, but the competitional level at the seniors tournaments is not really high there currently.

[smirker]

Originally Posted by fgs

i have completed the report on the oehms string, i have basically tested the 1.23mm and the 1.27mm diameters, the thicker one having basically worse grades in every aspect with the exception of durability, so that i decided not to mention it separately in the survey.

next up is the blackout from pro's pro, a pentagonally shaped black string sporting a 1.24mm diameter. stringing was no problem and it does really feel quite crisp. i have so far played a doubles match with it and i feel much better with it than with the oehms strings. we'll see how it performs in the "long run".

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this one. I have two sets myself but not got around to trying it yet. My guess is it will prove to bea good main string for a baseline orientated spin game.

[GlenK]

Originally Posted by fgs

i am not familiar with the ntrp level and in the mean time i'm moving towards 47, but in my younger years i have played in the second division in austria and have been amongst the top 100 (in austria obviously!). last year i have won the +45 nationals in romania, but the competitional level at the seniors tournaments is not really high there currently.

Here are the rating levels so you'll know when people say 4.0 where they fall into these categories.

http://tennisclub.gsfc.nasa.gov/tennis.ratings.html

[fgs]

glenk,
thank you for that info - i must then be around a 5.0 in this case. 25 years ago i was nationally ranked but that's a long time ago and yes, i do still take the ball early and can hit some winners off shorter balls on both wings. even with a bad shoulder i can still hit every now and then an ace, but i rather go for kickers as that is less stress on the shoulder. age will have definitely decreased my level, so i should probably be somewhere around a 5.0 i assume.

after winning the nationals in romania last year i had an itf ranking at the seniors (around 230 if i'm not wrong), but now i don't play tournaments so often since i'm basically coaching my son and we attend tournaments quite often.