Stringing up POG with poly

With all the talk in the "How to string Wilson T2000?" thread, I dug mine out and also stumbled on my old POG OS. It's this:



Weighs 380 grams, about 10 points headlight, and according to the sticker I strung it with a string called "Revelation" at 62 pounds. I have no recall of any string by that name but it's some synthetic gut. Still pings tight.

I want to string this up with a middle of the road poly and hit with it some. I'm kinda/sorta worried about the grommets having become brittle so I only want to string it once so I'm asking for advice as to the tension I should try. My current racquet is an SW104 strung with poly at 51-53 in the center mains and 46-48 in the center crosses, decreasing tension going towards the edges.

What rough range in tension with an average poly would give me roughly the same stringbed stiffness? I'm thinking 56/52. Sound about right?

Very cool racket.
I've been using the reissue 93

i strung mine w cyclone at 55 lbs. works nicely

I strung my POG up with 16g kevlar / 15L nylon at 67 lbs on my last trip to Seattle and loved it.

@Injured Again , I have 4 iterations of the POG OS, it is going to be a crapshoot as they all play different. In the 1-stripe you have the grommets are often so brittle that even that will make difference in stringing. I think old rock hard grommets make a difference in feel .I removed all the grommets from my 1 stripe and replaced with Fittex. Start monkeying around with the other Prince OS's and it gets even "wilder" even if you stay within crossbar Prince OSs. Then there are the Prince OSs without crossbar. The best "feeling" crossbar OS is one of the two iterations of the 4-stripe. The more recent Tours aren't bad.The Chang graphite OS are too light and wobbly against hard hitters. My new to me Chang Ti OS is inbound as I type this.

The the more recently re-released POGs, which is what I believe I have, were only 5 pts headlight in stock form, and thus had more customization room. You might check to make sure your handle hasn’t been modified.

I strung up the POG OS using some string from a reel of a prototype Luxilon string that never made it to production. Kind of a run-of-the-mill poly with some sort of coating that seems to make it sticky more than anything, but the underlying string is pretty decent but average in all respects.

56/54 tension in the mains and crosses. There was one part where the tube portion of the grommet had broken off somewhere inside the frame and I had tubed it last time, so I had to tube it again to prevent the edge of the string hole from cutting into the string. I got a white overgrip from Diadem as part of the Flash string test so I put that on. The leather grip underneath was all sticky and gnarly from being covered with that tattered blue (Tourna?) overgrip for the last two decades. Final specs are 386 grams static weight, 9 points headlight. It swings a hair heavier than my SW104's so estimated swingweight is in the lower 350's or so.

As far as I remember, I had this racquet from new. I believe I would have gotten a cover with it at some point but have no idea where that might be. @travlerajm how can I tell if the handle has been modified? I wouldn't have done it, but would anything be underneath the butt cap? The size is 4 1/2 and it feels like it should with a leather grip plus overgrip.

Will be heading out on court to hit with it this afternoon. Even found a prince dampener to go with it!



Here's the part where the grommet had previously broken. I'm glad nothing else broke - I was concerned the grommet might split at the tie-off holes but they held together. The grommet itself just feels brittle. Are these grommet sets still available?



Thanks, everyone for your help and comments!

graycrait said:

@Injured Again , I have 4 iterations of the POG OS, it is going to be a crapshoot as they all play different. In the 1-stripe you have the grommets are often so brittle that even that will make difference in stringing. I think old rock hard grommets make a difference in feel .I removed all the grommets from my 1 stripe and replaced with Fittex. Start monkeying around with the other Prince OS's and it gets even "wilder" even if you stay within crossbar Prince OSs. Then there are the Prince OSs without crossbar. The best "feeling" crossbar OS is one of the two iterations of the 4-stripe. The more recent Tours aren't bad.The Chang graphite OS are too light and wobbly against hard hitters. My new to me Chang Ti OS is inbound as I type this.

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@graycrait Where in the series of POG OS's is my racquet from? Didn't they start with no stripe, then go to one stripe, and then four? I didn't even know there was a version without the crossbar!

Injured Again said:

I didn't even know there was a version without the crossbar!

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I misspoke. There are quite a few Prince OS's that play pretty well but are not specifically known as POGs and many do not have crossbars. For example: Spectrum Comp 110, Graphtech DB 110, the two Michael Chang versions with crossbars, the NXG with a crossbar I think and so on. For every Prince 90 of the 1980's there seemed to be a corresponding 110 version. @Ultra 2 , @Sanglier and @retrowagen know better than I do.

The Response with the vibration absorbing throat bridge was only offered as a 90, I think.

retrowagen said:

The Response with the vibration absorbing throat bridge was only offered as a 90, I think.

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There was a 110 version of the purple/burgundy one. What would have been nice is if they made a Boron 90.. i would have been all over that.

I hit with it for a few minutes today. It's a very solid, vibrationless, but plush feel. I think the feel might even be better with a couple of pounds less tension. When swinging harder, it literally feels like I can sense the racquet flexing at impact, almost like a wood racquet. The thing most difficult to get used to was that the sweetspot seemed fairly low in the stringbed. That combined with the 1" shorter length and larger headsize made for a sweetspot location probably two inches closer to me than with my current racquet. There's a fair amount of vibration when missing high on the stringbed. Volleys are sublime - the heft means a very short and accurate punch puts the ball back with a lot of velocity and great directional control.

I've now pulled out my Wilson Ultra II Midsize. I had strung this up with SPPP at some point in the last 10-15 years. The color actually matches the stripes on the frame, but it is strung too tight. I'm going to restring this and then have both those racquets in my bag for a while for nostalgia's sake. These were my two go-to racquets for a long time.

This thread makes me want to pull out my POG OS and hit. Too many racquets, too little time.

I hit a bit more this morning with my POG OS and now that the string tension has relaxed a bit, it's a better hit. I took some fairly normal swings and it is very powerful - more so than my leaded up SW104. I'm going to have to play more with it when I start up tennis again in mid-August. The way it swings and the contact feel is pretty nice.

Dug out my POG OS, strung up with Rs Lyon 52/47 and had a hit. Man I almost forgot how addicting its plow/power/feel/stability are. And all my previous string setups in it were wrong, syn gut, vs gut. It’s meant to be played with full poly. Thinking about getting another from TW now.