Not trying to detour the thread with a "novel", but be forewarned..
This is quite a time to fantasize all kind of scenarios or questions, but .. I do not care about picking one racket for the rest of my life time.. if I get to hit now, I would enjoy ANY stick. I do not care what material it is made from. It can be made of wood, steel or aluminum or composite of whatever. However, the last racquet that totally blew my head how good it felt was a Yonex YY-8500 I strung with 25 lb SG, restrung to 16x18.
I am not ashamed to say that the sticks that I enjoy the most, often cost me the least. This YY-8500 along with 4 other sticks was part of a haul from a local recycling shop. Anyway, YY-8500 is no beauty. It looks funny. The egg shaped head is barely larger than a badminton racquet's. The individual grommets are like rivets, very rugged unlike the modern ones. The aluminum hoop was welded to the shaped throat pieces looking very industrial. Then two pieces of wood forms the shape of the grip under the leather grip. It is odd looking, unlike the T-2000 that looks kind of trick with all the wires wound all the way around with a very peculiar stringing pattern that I have not dare to attempt, though multiple version of instruction had already been downloaded.
It was probably the low score on the desirability scale that prompt me to mess with the YY-8500. I have a tendency to respect the "nice" sticks so much that I keep a distance to admire them rather than indulge with them. Since the string was broken, it was strung with Forten Competition Nylon at 25 lbs. Last time, the 25 lbs on a Dunlop Maxy Ply felt pretty good, so I repeated that but then removed two main and 1 cross string to loosen up the string bed. The result was .. amazing.
387 g of static mass sounds like a club, yet, it "snaps", whip around nicely. The whole idea of high swing weight being less maneuverable felt completely contradictory to how this stick feels. If you ever tried short takeback "ATP" forehand with T-2000 you might get a sense of what I am talking about. Groundstrokes felt effortless. The frame .... butter. The string bed felt forgiving. Instead of trying out the YY-8500 only for warm up, I enjoyed hitting with it for the whole 2 hour session. I love it!
(I do enjoy a good story, especially in a time like this. Please be generous about your posts. At least.. 200 words?)