Old thread, but recently grabbed an 800i since 400i's and 200g's are my favs but keep finding myself wishing for even a little more string real estate.
Replaced the grip with a synthetic, strung with gosen og sheep 17. and it weighs in at 351 with a 4 3/8 grip. 9pts HL. Fascinated that these could come in at 380g+!!! Assuming that's at bigger grip sizes, or did it not work that way by that point?
At this 351g weight this one is super playable, swing weight feels like high 320's, maybe low 330's. Next time I'll string it a bit lower than the 50 it's at, just feels like all these IMF frames are happiest at loosey goosey tensions, it feels a little too high strung even at just 50lbs, but that may just be me.
The one I had came improperly strung and warped -- the frame has grooves that you're supposed to run the strings through to keep things flush with the frame, but the previous stringer literally did the opposite, running the string OVER the frame and avoiding the grooves. As a result the strings were all zigzaggy on the face, and one side of the frame was being pulled in pretty badly. Luckily it returned to shape after the crappy string job was eviscerated with prejudice.
It really does have that feeling on center of the frame like a black hole sucking up all vibration, though it certainly doesn't offer the same forgiveness off-center as the previous IMF frames (though I've never played with a 500). As
@Grafil Injection mentioned it doesn't really want to do spinny stuff and seems happiest just moving mass through the ball. I'm curious to put a little bit of lead at 6 and 12 to get a bit more SW and reduce some frame vibration. I'm pretty shocked at the reports of it having ~40 RA ... I dunno, it certainly doesn't feel that flexy to me, though the fact it also has that widebody feel might be throwing me off.
Regarding bumpers, I did find another one on the auction site that seemed to have a fairly weird three-part plastic bumper thingo, one little piece at 12 o'clock and two longer side pieces, it didn't look aftermarket or anything, so maybe an edition later in the run. It was cheap enough so I picked it up and will share pics of it later this week. Anyway 800i is definitely a very nice frame but doesn't have that "omg I have to play with this for the rest of my life" feeling I get from the 200g and 400i. High bar I guess!