R
Rackets Runyon
Guest
These days I go by the moniker of "Rackets Runyon," although I have been known otherwise in the past. This here's the tale of "Frenchie the Fireman," the Laserfibre MS200DX, and me.
Now, first yous all should know a bit about myself and Frenchie. We does much of the stringing for a major outfit of athletic clubs, as they like to call themselves these days. Frenchie, truthfully, is not really French at all. He's a big honkin' Scandahoovian hockey player. He is known as "Frenchie" because he developed a habit of wearing a beret on the court. So, Frenchie it is and ever shall be. Frenchie is also a real-life volunteer fireman. Now, just because of my moniker, let none of yous bums out there get any idea that Frenchie is anything less than 100% legitimate, honorable, and completely above board when it comes to fighting fires. He is not like those bums back in the Five Points in the 19th century. Those bums back then started as many fires as they put out, if you get my drift. Thank goodness, we all live in modern times...Anyway, Frenchie, he also does some of the buying for da clubs we string for.
Me? Little old Rackets? I'm what they call one of them long-time USRSA Master Racquet Techs and Stringing Certification Tester in these here parts of the purple mountains' majesties and amber waves of grain. I've strung on everything from old Ektelons to some of the fanciest Babolats. It's been in places as far and wide from Sumatra to Saskatoon and also at the Open in Noo Yawk and the Lipton, now the Nasdaq or whatever it wants to call itself these days, in Key Biscayne. As da kids put it these days, when it comes to stringing, I got some game.
So, it goes down like this. One day, Frenchie says to me, "Hey, Rackets! The boys in Chicago want to express their gratitude to us for all the business we given them. They wants to buy us a new machine we can put in one of the clubs."
"Frenchie, this quite fitting and proper that the Chicago outfit does this for us," says I. "After all, we is a very large account for them. What exactly do you have in mind that they procure for us?"
"Well," says Frenchie. "I don't think they'll spring for anything over two Gs. I been looking at those TW message boards and I am stricken with the Laserfibre MS200DX. It could be the bee's knees!"
"I have also seen these posts several times, but I have only seen pictures of said machine. It looks very high tech. Also, in years past, I have strung on somewaht similar type of continuous pull drop weight type machines when I did that contract for the Tecnifibre mob at the Open. Them was Pro Cord machines with single action clamps. As my memory serves, they was pretty good."
"Well, I want to get the Laserfibre with the single action clamps," says Frenchie.
"Oh, Frenchie. Very tres chic," says I.
Many weeks pass. In the meantime, I come into a new summer only, uh...operation, managing the tennis pro shop at Platinum Acres Country Club where the tennis director is an acquaintance of mine...a big shtarker named John Johnson who played for Wisconsin. As we are north of the Mason Dixon line, the summer season runs from may to about Labor Day. I am very busy during this time, as I am doing the Platinum Acres in addition to my year-round week at Big Louie's Club and Club 1066, both part of the chain for which Frenchie and I work. So, I do not see Frenchie for these many weeks.
Now, John Johnson has no working stringing machine at Platinum Acres because the previous manager took his with him when he left. At first, Johnson thinks he wants to buy a new machine for the shop. I tell him this will be a good investment. He asks me what machine he should get. Being that this is a summer only operation, I suggest options like the Ektelon Neos or the Laserfibre. But then, Johnson demurs. He asks me, "Rackets. Don't you have a machine that you could bring for the summer?'
Of course I do. It is my little hot rod stringer, known as Taiwan Tessie. As you may surmise by her moniker, Tessie is made in the Far East, as many machines are these days. Tessie is what I string on at home. Unlike a few of her ilk, Tessie is built like a brick house. She is a lockout design with an outstanding six point mounting turntable. A very cool thing about Tessie is that she also has optional screw-in inside mounting supports at slightly off 12 and 6 o'clock, as you would see on Ektelon, Prince, or Laserfibre machines. These are useful if one has to string some E-Force whackitball and other funny stuff. But normally, the standard supports at 12 and 6 are completely and totally superb. Together with the four quickly adjustable outside supports, a racquet can be mounted in about 30 seconds. Tessie is also a dual action clamp design, where her designer was bright enough to use these clamp rails to act as additional reinforcement for the turntable proper.
Did I imply that Tessie was purely Asian? Well, strictly speaking, Tessie is more accurately what you might call Eurasian. See, Tessie's original string clamps were not quite up to my standards. So, Tessie has been modified. She has the string clamps from my very first Babolat machine. These have been well cared for over the many years. How many years you ask? Well, these clamps are so old they have the original BMW logo on them. For you youngsters out there, I am not talking about some overpriced car from Bavaria. This BMW stands for Babolat Maillot Witt, the original name of the company. These Babolat clamps dropped right into the rail clamps on Tessie. As I said before, Tessie is what I call a hot rod stringer...or as the car kids might call it these days, a tuner stringer.
Anyway, back to Frenchie and me. So, I do not see Frenchie for these many weeks. But one day, Frenchie stops at Platinum Acres to pay us boys a visit and have a hit. Frenchie, who has a thing for racquets like what Imelda Marco had for shoes, brings along a couple of the new NCode Pro Staff 6.1 European editions with the desnse 18 by 20 pattern. This is months before Wilson decides it will sell this model in the US. Frenchie is always looking for that magic stick he does not need, as Frenchie has great strokes and hits the ball like a ton of bricks. Truth to tell, Frenchie's biggest problem related to his game is that he perhaps should partake of fewer pomme frites and barley and malt type beverages, if you get my drift. But who am I to tell Frenchie not to enjoy "la dolce vita?"
So I asks Frenchie, "Did you ever get the Laserfibre?"
"Oh yeah. A couple weeks ago."
"How does it work?"
I make nothing of it at the time, but Frenchie does not answer right away. But after this brief pause, he says, "Pretty good. It's a little different. Seems to string a bit looser than the Babolat."
As I says before, I take no mind of this. After all, it is the middle of summer and me, Rackets, is pretty busy. But then, one day in August, Frenchie stops out again at Platinum Acres to hit with us. He asks me, "Hey, Rackets. How'd you like to have a Laserfibre to string on at Club 1066, to replace the old EktelonH what is there?"
Now, the H is an older machine, but it has been upgraded with the new Neos clamps. Nothin' fancy, but considering I usually don't have more than a few rackets to do at 1066, it works. On the other hand, it is a bit of a pain to do fan pattern whackitball with. One must use a flying clamp on the outer mains, which is slightly bush league in my opinion. So, I says, "Sure, Frenchie. Whatever you say."
At this juncture, I should point out that the machine I do most of my stringing on is the Prince 3000 we have at Big Louie's. By me, this is one very fine machine. Super fast and secure mounting system, the turntable locks automaticallly when the tension is pulled, three speeds for the tension pull, and some nice string clamps. A real high class act. But Club 1066 does not do the business like at Big Louie's. So, I figure getting a Laserfibre is a step up.
More weeks pass. It is now past Labor Day. I am starting to wind things up at Platinum Acres. One day, I show up at Club 1066 and the old Ektelon is gone. In its place is a Laserfibre MS200DX with single action clamps...and no owner's manual in sight. I quickly get on the blower to Frenchie. "Hey, how about a manual for this thing?" I asks.
"Gee, I think it's in my office at the Slumbering Pines Club." This is where Frenchie teaches and does most of his stringing. "I'll fax it to you."
"Superb," says I.
So, I take the opportunity to familiarize myself with the Laserfibre. It looks sharp, but there are certain things I notice. First, the teeth on the string clamps are too far apart for my taste. Given how they need to fit into different string patterns, I wonder if this will be a problem with single action clamps. See, the slick single action clamp type machines I've strung on before actually had smaller clamps. Not badminton small mind you, but a good half inch smaller than the typical clamp you see on dual action designs. Those worked very well. These I think will be more, uh, problematic.
Next, is the tensioning mechanism and string jaws. This is what's sometimes called "a real piece of work," but in this case the engineer that comes to mind is Rube Goldberg or one of his next of kin. For those unacquainted with the late Mr. Goldberg, he was famous some fifty years ago for designing comically complicated incetions to perform relatively simple tasks. In its quest to have a so-called continuous pull machine that needs no electricity, Laserfibre has had to engineer everything else to work with this design that pulls downward.
The string tensioning jaws are like none I have ever seen elsewheres. Rather than laying the string into the jaws from above or wrapping the string around a drum head, the string must come into the tension head from one of two sides. And why are there two sides to the tension head? Because the racket is being strung in a horizontal plane and the tension is actually being pulled in a vertical plane, the string must be clamped from top and bottom, rather than side to side. Couple that with the fact that the turntable does not rotate a full 360 degrees, it only does about 320 or so before hitting some stops. Therefore at different times during the stringing process, it is highly advisable that the string be placed into a particular side of the tension head or you risk having the string pull itself out of the jaws when the tension is pulled. If that happens. the string will be pinched in the jaws. That means it will be flat-spotted or worse, it will break.
But that is not all that offends my sense of design. There is also the foot pedal for the tension pull. This foot pedal reminds me of the way One Man Band Mahoney used to play the bass drum on his back while at the same time being able to play both violin and harmonica. It is also somewhat reminiscient of the ancient Serrano design, which diappeared during the Bronze Age or the 1970s. Well, it will work, as long as one has the use of all their appendages. Wheelchair players and peg legs will have to look elsewhere.
The racket mounting part of the turntable is abit better, if more time consuming than on other machines. One must make about ten separate and distinct adjustments for every racquet. This is much more time consuming than on any other machine I can remember stringing on. However, when properly mounted, support for the racket is quite good, but certainly no better than on my Tessie.
However, I, Rackets must reserve his most serious criticism for the tension read-out scale. If the rigamarole one has to go through to change the tension range from 40-80 pouind to 16-40 pounds ain't bad enough, having to line up some curved reference lines on a plastic plate to a bolt sitting inside the machine takes the proverbial cake. ARE YOU KNUCKLEHEADS KIDDING? This is downright Neanderthal. Heck, on my Tessie, with its coarse and fine tension knobs, I can adjust the reference tension to as small an increment as about 1/4 pound if I so desire. Electronic machines sometime give you half-pound increments. Here, you is lucky if you are within two pounds. Ideally, with an analog read-out, you want to line up some fine straight lines against each other. Sadly, this is not the case with the Lasefibre.
Now, all this really makes not much difference for the crowd at Club 1066. Most of them get their rackets strung only when they break a string or every six months, whichever comes later. In my actual stringing on the MS200DX, my suspicions are largely confirmed. As machines go, it is best described as "quirky." The single action clamps have more "slip-back" than on the others I've strung on. It is no faster than Tessie and certainly slower than the Prince 3000. It is however, a bit faster than the old H I was using at 1066. But, when I compare it to the other available options out there, the MS200DX is a pretty odd duck.
Then, one day I stop by Slumbering Pines to see if Frenchie has a certain bumper set. I walk into the office the pros share and what does I see? Frenchie stringing on a brand spanking new Prince 3000!
"Frenchie," I says. "What gives?"
He looks at me. "Well, Rackets. Certain arrangements were made."
"Arrangements?" I asks. "You don't mean like some of my distant cousins would say, 'somebody got permanently vacationed?'"
"No, Rackets. Nothing like that. No bodies ended up in the trunk of a Lincoln Town Car. But no one else here wanted to string on the Laserfibre and I wasn't crazy about it myself."
"But Frenchie, you was the one who was so hot to trot for it in the first place."
"I know. But see, you know Bags, Our Bag Man?"
"Certainly. A fine, upstanding individual."
"Well, Bags wanted to do some stringing here, too. He's done a little in the past. He tried stringing on the Laserfibre."
"And?" I asks.
Frenchie hesitates a two-count before answering, just to build the suspense. "Rackets, let us just say that I did not know a Lutheran could have such a colorful vocabulary."
"I see," says I. "Well, at least we did not pay any real money for it."
Frenchie can see that I am somewhat perturbed by events as they have transpired. "Rackets, if you want, yous can have your old Ektelon back at Club 1066."
"No, Frenchie, things are more or less copacetic. I can take a certain perverse pleasure in stringing on the Laserfibre because I know no one elsewants to string on its most cattywampus design. Although as my much limited knowledge of perverse pleasures goes, this does not rank very high on the list. It is certainly below one of those 'Death by Chocolate' type desserts.
It is then that I am struck by a moment of inspiration. Maybe it was saying "cattywampus" that did it.
"Say, Frenchie."
"What, Rackets?"
"You know how the tensioning system on the Laserfibre pulls down?"
"Sure. What of it?"
"I think an individual could turn the Laserfibre into quite a racket catapult. Don't use the 12 o'clock hold-downs and figure out a way to release the 6 o'clock supports as you pull tension at say, 80 pounds. This would be just the thing to try with some old sticks after consuming some barley and malt type beverages!"
"This we will have to try in the future," says Frenchie.
"Think of it. Which flies farther, Wilson or Prince? Catapult a Volkl Catapult! Do Babolats go ballistic?"
"Easy, Rackets. Easy."
So, guys and dolls, there you have the true tale of Frenchie, me, and the Laserfibre MS200DX. I do string about seven to ten racquets per week on it. Would I string for tour pros on this machine? I think not. In my opinion it is not a machine with the consistency required for such work. Would I string natural gut with it? No, because I have better options. Given other machines out there, would I spend hard coin on one? Definitely not. Better options are available at the same price or less. Will club players be able to tell the difference between a racquet strung by me on this machine and one strung by me on something else? No, I know how to compensate for its problems. Do I string my own personal sticks on it? I do not. Did we try the MS200DX as a catapult. I'm still waiting for Frenchie to buy the beer.
Now, first yous all should know a bit about myself and Frenchie. We does much of the stringing for a major outfit of athletic clubs, as they like to call themselves these days. Frenchie, truthfully, is not really French at all. He's a big honkin' Scandahoovian hockey player. He is known as "Frenchie" because he developed a habit of wearing a beret on the court. So, Frenchie it is and ever shall be. Frenchie is also a real-life volunteer fireman. Now, just because of my moniker, let none of yous bums out there get any idea that Frenchie is anything less than 100% legitimate, honorable, and completely above board when it comes to fighting fires. He is not like those bums back in the Five Points in the 19th century. Those bums back then started as many fires as they put out, if you get my drift. Thank goodness, we all live in modern times...Anyway, Frenchie, he also does some of the buying for da clubs we string for.
Me? Little old Rackets? I'm what they call one of them long-time USRSA Master Racquet Techs and Stringing Certification Tester in these here parts of the purple mountains' majesties and amber waves of grain. I've strung on everything from old Ektelons to some of the fanciest Babolats. It's been in places as far and wide from Sumatra to Saskatoon and also at the Open in Noo Yawk and the Lipton, now the Nasdaq or whatever it wants to call itself these days, in Key Biscayne. As da kids put it these days, when it comes to stringing, I got some game.
So, it goes down like this. One day, Frenchie says to me, "Hey, Rackets! The boys in Chicago want to express their gratitude to us for all the business we given them. They wants to buy us a new machine we can put in one of the clubs."
"Frenchie, this quite fitting and proper that the Chicago outfit does this for us," says I. "After all, we is a very large account for them. What exactly do you have in mind that they procure for us?"
"Well," says Frenchie. "I don't think they'll spring for anything over two Gs. I been looking at those TW message boards and I am stricken with the Laserfibre MS200DX. It could be the bee's knees!"
"I have also seen these posts several times, but I have only seen pictures of said machine. It looks very high tech. Also, in years past, I have strung on somewaht similar type of continuous pull drop weight type machines when I did that contract for the Tecnifibre mob at the Open. Them was Pro Cord machines with single action clamps. As my memory serves, they was pretty good."
"Well, I want to get the Laserfibre with the single action clamps," says Frenchie.
"Oh, Frenchie. Very tres chic," says I.
Many weeks pass. In the meantime, I come into a new summer only, uh...operation, managing the tennis pro shop at Platinum Acres Country Club where the tennis director is an acquaintance of mine...a big shtarker named John Johnson who played for Wisconsin. As we are north of the Mason Dixon line, the summer season runs from may to about Labor Day. I am very busy during this time, as I am doing the Platinum Acres in addition to my year-round week at Big Louie's Club and Club 1066, both part of the chain for which Frenchie and I work. So, I do not see Frenchie for these many weeks.
Now, John Johnson has no working stringing machine at Platinum Acres because the previous manager took his with him when he left. At first, Johnson thinks he wants to buy a new machine for the shop. I tell him this will be a good investment. He asks me what machine he should get. Being that this is a summer only operation, I suggest options like the Ektelon Neos or the Laserfibre. But then, Johnson demurs. He asks me, "Rackets. Don't you have a machine that you could bring for the summer?'
Of course I do. It is my little hot rod stringer, known as Taiwan Tessie. As you may surmise by her moniker, Tessie is made in the Far East, as many machines are these days. Tessie is what I string on at home. Unlike a few of her ilk, Tessie is built like a brick house. She is a lockout design with an outstanding six point mounting turntable. A very cool thing about Tessie is that she also has optional screw-in inside mounting supports at slightly off 12 and 6 o'clock, as you would see on Ektelon, Prince, or Laserfibre machines. These are useful if one has to string some E-Force whackitball and other funny stuff. But normally, the standard supports at 12 and 6 are completely and totally superb. Together with the four quickly adjustable outside supports, a racquet can be mounted in about 30 seconds. Tessie is also a dual action clamp design, where her designer was bright enough to use these clamp rails to act as additional reinforcement for the turntable proper.
Did I imply that Tessie was purely Asian? Well, strictly speaking, Tessie is more accurately what you might call Eurasian. See, Tessie's original string clamps were not quite up to my standards. So, Tessie has been modified. She has the string clamps from my very first Babolat machine. These have been well cared for over the many years. How many years you ask? Well, these clamps are so old they have the original BMW logo on them. For you youngsters out there, I am not talking about some overpriced car from Bavaria. This BMW stands for Babolat Maillot Witt, the original name of the company. These Babolat clamps dropped right into the rail clamps on Tessie. As I said before, Tessie is what I call a hot rod stringer...or as the car kids might call it these days, a tuner stringer.
Anyway, back to Frenchie and me. So, I do not see Frenchie for these many weeks. But one day, Frenchie stops at Platinum Acres to pay us boys a visit and have a hit. Frenchie, who has a thing for racquets like what Imelda Marco had for shoes, brings along a couple of the new NCode Pro Staff 6.1 European editions with the desnse 18 by 20 pattern. This is months before Wilson decides it will sell this model in the US. Frenchie is always looking for that magic stick he does not need, as Frenchie has great strokes and hits the ball like a ton of bricks. Truth to tell, Frenchie's biggest problem related to his game is that he perhaps should partake of fewer pomme frites and barley and malt type beverages, if you get my drift. But who am I to tell Frenchie not to enjoy "la dolce vita?"
So I asks Frenchie, "Did you ever get the Laserfibre?"
"Oh yeah. A couple weeks ago."
"How does it work?"
I make nothing of it at the time, but Frenchie does not answer right away. But after this brief pause, he says, "Pretty good. It's a little different. Seems to string a bit looser than the Babolat."
As I says before, I take no mind of this. After all, it is the middle of summer and me, Rackets, is pretty busy. But then, one day in August, Frenchie stops out again at Platinum Acres to hit with us. He asks me, "Hey, Rackets. How'd you like to have a Laserfibre to string on at Club 1066, to replace the old EktelonH what is there?"
Now, the H is an older machine, but it has been upgraded with the new Neos clamps. Nothin' fancy, but considering I usually don't have more than a few rackets to do at 1066, it works. On the other hand, it is a bit of a pain to do fan pattern whackitball with. One must use a flying clamp on the outer mains, which is slightly bush league in my opinion. So, I says, "Sure, Frenchie. Whatever you say."
At this juncture, I should point out that the machine I do most of my stringing on is the Prince 3000 we have at Big Louie's. By me, this is one very fine machine. Super fast and secure mounting system, the turntable locks automaticallly when the tension is pulled, three speeds for the tension pull, and some nice string clamps. A real high class act. But Club 1066 does not do the business like at Big Louie's. So, I figure getting a Laserfibre is a step up.
More weeks pass. It is now past Labor Day. I am starting to wind things up at Platinum Acres. One day, I show up at Club 1066 and the old Ektelon is gone. In its place is a Laserfibre MS200DX with single action clamps...and no owner's manual in sight. I quickly get on the blower to Frenchie. "Hey, how about a manual for this thing?" I asks.
"Gee, I think it's in my office at the Slumbering Pines Club." This is where Frenchie teaches and does most of his stringing. "I'll fax it to you."
"Superb," says I.
So, I take the opportunity to familiarize myself with the Laserfibre. It looks sharp, but there are certain things I notice. First, the teeth on the string clamps are too far apart for my taste. Given how they need to fit into different string patterns, I wonder if this will be a problem with single action clamps. See, the slick single action clamp type machines I've strung on before actually had smaller clamps. Not badminton small mind you, but a good half inch smaller than the typical clamp you see on dual action designs. Those worked very well. These I think will be more, uh, problematic.
Next, is the tensioning mechanism and string jaws. This is what's sometimes called "a real piece of work," but in this case the engineer that comes to mind is Rube Goldberg or one of his next of kin. For those unacquainted with the late Mr. Goldberg, he was famous some fifty years ago for designing comically complicated incetions to perform relatively simple tasks. In its quest to have a so-called continuous pull machine that needs no electricity, Laserfibre has had to engineer everything else to work with this design that pulls downward.
The string tensioning jaws are like none I have ever seen elsewheres. Rather than laying the string into the jaws from above or wrapping the string around a drum head, the string must come into the tension head from one of two sides. And why are there two sides to the tension head? Because the racket is being strung in a horizontal plane and the tension is actually being pulled in a vertical plane, the string must be clamped from top and bottom, rather than side to side. Couple that with the fact that the turntable does not rotate a full 360 degrees, it only does about 320 or so before hitting some stops. Therefore at different times during the stringing process, it is highly advisable that the string be placed into a particular side of the tension head or you risk having the string pull itself out of the jaws when the tension is pulled. If that happens. the string will be pinched in the jaws. That means it will be flat-spotted or worse, it will break.
But that is not all that offends my sense of design. There is also the foot pedal for the tension pull. This foot pedal reminds me of the way One Man Band Mahoney used to play the bass drum on his back while at the same time being able to play both violin and harmonica. It is also somewhat reminiscient of the ancient Serrano design, which diappeared during the Bronze Age or the 1970s. Well, it will work, as long as one has the use of all their appendages. Wheelchair players and peg legs will have to look elsewhere.
The racket mounting part of the turntable is abit better, if more time consuming than on other machines. One must make about ten separate and distinct adjustments for every racquet. This is much more time consuming than on any other machine I can remember stringing on. However, when properly mounted, support for the racket is quite good, but certainly no better than on my Tessie.
However, I, Rackets must reserve his most serious criticism for the tension read-out scale. If the rigamarole one has to go through to change the tension range from 40-80 pouind to 16-40 pounds ain't bad enough, having to line up some curved reference lines on a plastic plate to a bolt sitting inside the machine takes the proverbial cake. ARE YOU KNUCKLEHEADS KIDDING? This is downright Neanderthal. Heck, on my Tessie, with its coarse and fine tension knobs, I can adjust the reference tension to as small an increment as about 1/4 pound if I so desire. Electronic machines sometime give you half-pound increments. Here, you is lucky if you are within two pounds. Ideally, with an analog read-out, you want to line up some fine straight lines against each other. Sadly, this is not the case with the Lasefibre.
Now, all this really makes not much difference for the crowd at Club 1066. Most of them get their rackets strung only when they break a string or every six months, whichever comes later. In my actual stringing on the MS200DX, my suspicions are largely confirmed. As machines go, it is best described as "quirky." The single action clamps have more "slip-back" than on the others I've strung on. It is no faster than Tessie and certainly slower than the Prince 3000. It is however, a bit faster than the old H I was using at 1066. But, when I compare it to the other available options out there, the MS200DX is a pretty odd duck.
Then, one day I stop by Slumbering Pines to see if Frenchie has a certain bumper set. I walk into the office the pros share and what does I see? Frenchie stringing on a brand spanking new Prince 3000!
"Frenchie," I says. "What gives?"
He looks at me. "Well, Rackets. Certain arrangements were made."
"Arrangements?" I asks. "You don't mean like some of my distant cousins would say, 'somebody got permanently vacationed?'"
"No, Rackets. Nothing like that. No bodies ended up in the trunk of a Lincoln Town Car. But no one else here wanted to string on the Laserfibre and I wasn't crazy about it myself."
"But Frenchie, you was the one who was so hot to trot for it in the first place."
"I know. But see, you know Bags, Our Bag Man?"
"Certainly. A fine, upstanding individual."
"Well, Bags wanted to do some stringing here, too. He's done a little in the past. He tried stringing on the Laserfibre."
"And?" I asks.
Frenchie hesitates a two-count before answering, just to build the suspense. "Rackets, let us just say that I did not know a Lutheran could have such a colorful vocabulary."
"I see," says I. "Well, at least we did not pay any real money for it."
Frenchie can see that I am somewhat perturbed by events as they have transpired. "Rackets, if you want, yous can have your old Ektelon back at Club 1066."
"No, Frenchie, things are more or less copacetic. I can take a certain perverse pleasure in stringing on the Laserfibre because I know no one elsewants to string on its most cattywampus design. Although as my much limited knowledge of perverse pleasures goes, this does not rank very high on the list. It is certainly below one of those 'Death by Chocolate' type desserts.
It is then that I am struck by a moment of inspiration. Maybe it was saying "cattywampus" that did it.
"Say, Frenchie."
"What, Rackets?"
"You know how the tensioning system on the Laserfibre pulls down?"
"Sure. What of it?"
"I think an individual could turn the Laserfibre into quite a racket catapult. Don't use the 12 o'clock hold-downs and figure out a way to release the 6 o'clock supports as you pull tension at say, 80 pounds. This would be just the thing to try with some old sticks after consuming some barley and malt type beverages!"
"This we will have to try in the future," says Frenchie.
"Think of it. Which flies farther, Wilson or Prince? Catapult a Volkl Catapult! Do Babolats go ballistic?"
"Easy, Rackets. Easy."
So, guys and dolls, there you have the true tale of Frenchie, me, and the Laserfibre MS200DX. I do string about seven to ten racquets per week on it. Would I string for tour pros on this machine? I think not. In my opinion it is not a machine with the consistency required for such work. Would I string natural gut with it? No, because I have better options. Given other machines out there, would I spend hard coin on one? Definitely not. Better options are available at the same price or less. Will club players be able to tell the difference between a racquet strung by me on this machine and one strung by me on something else? No, I know how to compensate for its problems. Do I string my own personal sticks on it? I do not. Did we try the MS200DX as a catapult. I'm still waiting for Frenchie to buy the beer.
