I've been playing a lot of tennis, thankfully, but in the last two days started noticing a really bad sound on off center hits - like I thought maybe the racquet was cracked. Mystified, I started knocking on the frame this evening at home, and noticed it's coming from the handle, so I took off the grip and the butt cap and actually the pallet too. Still, I heard the strange clacking rattle. There was silicone in the handle so I pried that out and discovered that while one side had very little silicone in there, the other had a bit more AND some kind of lead/metal stick, about 2 inches long and maybe a quarter inch wide (almost like a AAA battery). This is what was clacking around! Pretty crazy. Anyway, I noticed my other one actually has the same issue, though less pronounced at the moment, and found the same basic setup there also (silicone with a ~2inch rod/stick). For both sticks, I weighed the silicone/metal combo (roughly 18g in both cases), and replaced with an equivalent amount of Blue Tack, and that should fix it up nicely. I'll post some pictures of this at some point.
The other notable finding for me was the there is no V-Sensor in the handle - There are just two open tubes like you'd see in most racquets. This is totally different from the retail version (I have one of those) which does have the sensor and the hole in the center to hold it.
Anyway, I've really been loving these Almagro player stocks. Such amazing feel, combined with good playability too - not a hard racquet to use. I feel like it's helping me a lot more than it ever hurts me.
