retrowagen
Hall of Fame
Classic Racquet Talk forum regulars will probably recognize me as an enthusiast of Austrian-made racquets of the 1980’s. Quite right, having used Kneissl, Head, and finally Fischer frames in competition play between 1985 and 1993.
My association with the Fischer brand began in 1991, which coincided with probably the tennis arm of that company’s biggest success, Michael Stich winning the gentlemen’s singles championship at Wimbledon, with the Vacuum Pro Mid, an excellent but demanding ball-striking weapon.
Other pros were using that frame, and the midplus-sized Vacuum Twin Tec Pro was another frame pressed into service in the pro ranks, most notably by German Davis Cupper, Karl-Uwe Steeb.
The Twin Tec frames featured a novel engineering concept, with technology creatively borrowed from the ski side of the Fischer house: the composite body of the Twin Tec consisted of two symmetrical molded halves, with a layer of Vestoran (used commonly as a ski base) sandwiched between them, machined out, and drilled to accommodate the stringbed, without orthodox grommets. It was marketed as a “player’s widebody”, with good power from its size and weight, excellent feel, goid spin and control from the then-ubiquitous Fischer 16x20 stingbed with 10mm grids, and really good vibration dampening from that Vestoran inlay.
I have played a bit with the 1991 Vacuum Twin Tec Pro, have had some Pro Stock examples as well, and recently came into possession of a sample Twin Tec “sandwich”, as pictured here. It’s noteworthy that braided carbon fiber and Kevlar can be seen in the unpainted molded halves, that the grip pallets are integrally molded into the frame (which meant that Fischer needed separate molds for every grip size they intended to produce), and that the Vestoran layer started much wider than the composite halves that eventually were bonded together.
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My association with the Fischer brand began in 1991, which coincided with probably the tennis arm of that company’s biggest success, Michael Stich winning the gentlemen’s singles championship at Wimbledon, with the Vacuum Pro Mid, an excellent but demanding ball-striking weapon.
Other pros were using that frame, and the midplus-sized Vacuum Twin Tec Pro was another frame pressed into service in the pro ranks, most notably by German Davis Cupper, Karl-Uwe Steeb.
The Twin Tec frames featured a novel engineering concept, with technology creatively borrowed from the ski side of the Fischer house: the composite body of the Twin Tec consisted of two symmetrical molded halves, with a layer of Vestoran (used commonly as a ski base) sandwiched between them, machined out, and drilled to accommodate the stringbed, without orthodox grommets. It was marketed as a “player’s widebody”, with good power from its size and weight, excellent feel, goid spin and control from the then-ubiquitous Fischer 16x20 stingbed with 10mm grids, and really good vibration dampening from that Vestoran inlay.
I have played a bit with the 1991 Vacuum Twin Tec Pro, have had some Pro Stock examples as well, and recently came into possession of a sample Twin Tec “sandwich”, as pictured here. It’s noteworthy that braided carbon fiber and Kevlar can be seen in the unpainted molded halves, that the grip pallets are integrally molded into the frame (which meant that Fischer needed separate molds for every grip size they intended to produce), and that the Vestoran layer started much wider than the composite halves that eventually were bonded together.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
