First time hitting with Mayami strings was yesterday - I had my two new Prince Textreme Tour 100 (310) racquets strung with a set of Tour Hex 1.23 mm full bed at 52 lbs., and the other racquet with the "Big Twist" hybrid, Big Spin 1.25 mm mains at 52 lbs. and Magic Twist 1.25 mm crosses at 48 lbs. The other guy and I did a slow warm up and played a set up to 6-6, then we both had to leave. Altogether it was a full two hours of hitting, so I got a good taste of how these strings play. Impressions:
Big Twist seemed more stable, probably less string movement. More of a "solid" feel at ball contact. The string gauges were slightly bigger than the Tour Hex which may have explained it (1.25 vs. 1.23). Probably a bit more free power than the Tour Hex. Cool color combination!
Tour Hex started to pull away as my favorite of the two setups. Every so often I switched racquets to get a good feel for both setups. I had never played with a hexagonal shaped poly before yesterday, but it was amazing. I could actually feel the Tour Hex bite into the ball as I was hitting. The feel was much better than the Big Twist, some of which is probably because the Hex was a smaller gauge. The bite on the ball resulted in some fabulous spin, especially on my forehand which is my stronger side. The string helped my get decent spin on my backhand too, which has needed help.
I only served with the Tour Hex when we played a practice set but it only helped to reinforce how pleased I was with it. The feeling of string movement disappeared with the flat serve, resulting in some nice solid placement with depth once I got dialed in (I had not played since September). Once I got the kicker going, it resulted in some severe spin. A couple times I spun it right into the corner from the ad side, and it kicked to the guy's one handed backhand so high that all he could do was just lunge at it and spray it wide. And that's just after a short time of practicing! Imagine how well this string could play for me once I get a few more practice sessions under my belt. Drop shots were a dream. I got hold of a couple and they dropped like yesterday's mail. They stopped ten feet from the guy and he didn't even make an attempt to get them. Comfort and control overall seemed very good - no TE today.
The only things that were a negative for the Tour Hex was a pinging sound at contact, which I guess is normal with new string jobs, although I have never noticed it this pronounced before when I played with full bed polys. It's rather loud, so I may look into getting that large Gamma shock dampener to quiet it. This and a feeling that the strings were moving at contact, sort of a feeling of being "unstable" is the best way to describe it. Maybe this is just the way that a 1.23 mm string usually plays anyway. I don't think that it actually affected the end result of the shot though. I wonder if going with the higher gauge of 1.28 would help that feeling of string movement? Is this normal for a 1.23 mm gauge string? I guess that is considered a 17L, which is quite thin. It looks like the 1.28 is out of stock on the Mayami website so who knows if they will reintroduce it or not.