Looking for ~$1500-2000 stringer

[John_Doe]

Hi all

I’m currently looking to upgrade my stringing machine. I’ve only ever used tabletop Gamma drop weight machines. I saw the thread regarding the Apex Speed and the CS-350. Those two are definitely on the shortlist for what I’d like to get. The base clamps on the Alpha seem to be a big selling point over the Tourna, but are there reasons to consider the Tourna over the Alpha features/build quality wise? Maybe the self-leveling feature? The current pricing favors the CS-300 over the Apex Speed by $100, but that isn’t a huge consideration. Both offer pathways to electronic tension heads in the future. Regardless of what I choose, this is a new upgrade I’m going to very much enjoy.

Other alternatives would include the Pros Pro MT-400/Tomcat. That seems to be the most feature rich machine per dollar spent, but I’m worried that I’ll “get what I pay for,” with this as machines that are well designed with good build quality and similar features are at least twice as expensive.

Price wise the Tomcat would actually be less than an electronic tension head plus either the Tourna or Alpha. The electric pull isn’t a necessity for me, but I know I’m an equipment junkie and will end up wanting it.

Finally, the Stringmaster Deluxe LE V3 seems to get a lot of praise. Is that a well polished machine with great build quality worth the premium over the other three machines? Money isn’t really much of a factor, so I set an arbitrary $2000 price point since it seems overkill for my uses to buy something like an Alpha Ghost (as much as I would appreciate it, it’s just unnecessary).

Best
Krishna

 

[diredesire]

I would say no to whether or not there's any reason to prefer the Tourna. The clamp heads are very nice, and you can generally position them much closer to the frame if you prefer to do so, but I'll take great clamp bases over heads (provided the alternative is a reasonable/good head). The "self leveling" feature as far as I can tell is just the V-shaped profile of the mounting arms, which is shared on both machines, so is moot. There's some history with patents and dumb marketing lingo around mounts, but it seems a non-factor for consideration purposes.

The Alpha machine is just a better buy if you like that price point. I'd ask yourself how likely you are to upgrade to an eCP down the road. If the answer is "very likely," there's no reason why you shouldn't just go to that tier now, provided that the money "isn't really much of a factor."

Putting a WISE or an Ennox head on the alpha would net you a competitive machine to the Deluxe LE V3, but you end up at roughly the same price point in the end (within $1-200 depending on exchange rate and shipping costs). The stand is noticeably crappier in the Alpha case. However, something that others didn't mention is that the brake is nicer (IMO). It's more easily accessible and (unless my memory is very fuzzy) assuming it's similar to the NEOS' in operation, it doesn't catch much.

I have no experience with the Pros Pro machine, but it looks like it's a real contender at that price point. Assuming you want a stand, you'd have to factor that in (don't forget the shipping!!). That probably brings you into the territory of the Deluxe LE V3 and upgraded cranks when all is said and done. The performance and "goodness" of the tensioner module is a big question mark for me, but I haven't sought out any info about it to know one way or the other.

I'm biased on the Deluxe LE V3, because it's the machine I went with when looking at machines. I knew I'd go with an eCP over a crank, so I didn't bother with even thinking about the "cheaper" machines + upgrade since it just seemed like a hassle. The DLEV3 just happens to be a sweet spot in price/performance at the higher end of the spectrum, it's not magical or anything. The machine quality is where you hit a rapidly diminishing returns knee when looking at price/performance...

If your arbitrary price point was firm, there's nothing wrong with going with the cranks. If you plan to upgrade, my psychology is oriented towards buy once cry once, but I'm also at the point in my life where I have the disposable income where I'm not making hard tradeoff decisions. If it were highschool me all over again, I'd probably end up with a Stringway again (?). The corollary to that is that if your price point isn't really firm, the DLEV3 becomes the obvious decision to me if you care about eCP and you know you're going to upgrade.

Side note: The StringMaster 4000 Electronic (WISE head, non push down base) is also worth looking at. Comes with stand, nice clamp heads, good mounting system, solid/proven* tensioner. Clamp bases are upgradable if you care. Comparison against the alpha is that the tensioner is "better," but clamp bases are worse. You could also just do the calculus of upgrading bases vs. tensioner and choose whichever is cheaper, but at that point, you should also just compare against the DLEV3.

* Read into reliability issues

 

[John_Doe]

I would say no to whether or not there's any reason to prefer the Tourna. The clamp heads are very nice, and you can generally position them much closer to the frame if you prefer to do so, but I'll take great clamp bases over heads (provided the alternative is a reasonable/good head). The "self leveling" feature as far as I can tell is just the V-shaped profile of the mounting arms, which is shared on both machines, so is moot. There's some history with patents and dumb marketing lingo around mounts, but it seems a non-factor for consideration purposes.

The Alpha machine is just a better buy if you like that price point. I'd ask yourself how likely you are to upgrade to an eCP down the road. If the answer is "very likely," there's no reason why you shouldn't just go to that tier now, provided that the money "isn't really much of a factor."

Putting a WISE or an Ennox head on the alpha would net you a competitive machine to the Deluxe LE V3, but you end up at roughly the same price point in the end (within $1-200 depending on exchange rate and shipping costs). The stand is noticeably crappier in the Alpha case. However, something that others didn't mention is that the brake is nicer (IMO). It's more easily accessible and (unless my memory is very fuzzy) assuming it's similar to the NEOS' in operation, it doesn't catch much.

I have no experience with the Pros Pro machine, but it looks like it's a real contender at that price point. Assuming you want a stand, you'd have to factor that in (don't forget the shipping!!). That probably brings you into the territory of the Deluxe LE V3 and upgraded cranks when all is said and done. The performance and "goodness" of the tensioner module is a big question mark for me, but I haven't sought out any info about it to know one way or the other.

I'm biased on the Deluxe LE V3, because it's the machine I went with when looking at machines. I knew I'd go with an eCP over a crank, so I didn't bother with even thinking about the "cheaper" machines + upgrade since it just seemed like a hassle. The DLEV3 just happens to be a sweet spot in price/performance at the higher end of the spectrum, it's not magical or anything. The machine quality is where you hit a rapidly diminishing returns knee when looking at price/performance...

If your arbitrary price point was firm, there's nothing wrong with going with the cranks. If you plan to upgrade, my psychology is oriented towards buy once cry once, but I'm also at the point in my life where I have the disposable income where I'm not making hard tradeoff decisions. If it were highschool me all over again, I'd probably end up with a Stringway again (?). The corollary to that is that if your price point isn't really firm, the DLEV3 becomes the obvious decision to me if you care about eCP and you know you're going to upgrade.

Side note: The StringMaster 4000 Electronic (WISE head, non push down base) is also worth looking at. Comes with stand, nice clamp heads, good mounting system, solid/proven* tensioner. Clamp bases are upgradable if you care. Comparison against the alpha is that the tensioner is "better," but clamp bases are worse. You could also just do the calculus of upgrading bases vs. tensioner and choose whichever is cheaper, but at that point, you should also just compare against the DLEV3.

* Read into reliability issues

Is there anything you don’t like about the DLEV3?

Yeah I think I just gotta pull the trigger and go all out. Pricing them out, the Stringway Deluxe LE V3 (with premium stand which is currently available) comes to about $2290 and the MT-400 Tomcat comes to $1680 including shipping. Guess I’m probably going to go with one of those two. Anybody have any experience with both machines?

 

[Elrico]

Is there anything you don’t like about the DLEV3?

Yeah I think I just gotta pull the trigger and go all out. Pricing them out, the Stringway Deluxe LE V3 (with premium stand which is currently available) comes to about $2290 and the MT-400 Tomcat comes to $1680 including shipping. Guess I’m probably going to go with one of those two. Anybody have any experience with both machines?

I have had a PP Tomcat MT-400 for a few years now. I think it is a very good device for the price. Currently still accurate and problem free.
I put caster wheels under the support, that's the only change I made.

 

[diredesire]

Is there anything you don’t like about the DLEV3?

Yeah I think I just gotta pull the trigger and go all out. Pricing them out, the Stringway Deluxe LE V3 (with premium stand which is currently available) comes to about $2290 and the MT-400 Tomcat comes to $1680 including shipping. Guess I’m probably going to go with one of those two. Anybody have any experience with both machines?

I posted a review thread, and it has more or less all of my current opinions on the machine.

There are a handful of things that are mildly irritating about the machine, but that's true about every machine i've ever worked with. I think I actually prefer lever clamp bases, but it's not something I think about much. I don't rely on gravity release at all since it's not even 50% reliable, so I personally discount the push down clamps. I manually pop them up vs. bopping down on the pop-up lever, so overall action(s) are the same to me. One of my bases is a little looser than the other, and it has popped up a few times without me touching it (normally on release of the tensioner). I haven't bothered to tighten it simply because I'm doing one job at a time most times, and I forget by the time I'm done with the racquet.

I think the side mounts are too deep, and I have slight concerns that the shoulders of the frame aren't being supported as well as they could. The 6/12 o'clock mounts don't extend as far out as I'd like (as a result of me wanting to re-position the side mounts closer to the shoulders!). These are minor gripes.

The things that bother me more are that the mounting stocks/pillars rotate a bit when you adjust them, so side arms can be very uneven - to the point where one arm will be touching the frame, and the other will be .5+" away from the frame. It's an easy fix if you understand the mechanics of the machine, but since both sides have this issue, you need to keep the pillars loose while you adjust the side-arms to the racquet. Once that's done and all points are touching (i.e. the frame/mounts are centered), you then lock down the pillars. It's annoying and feels janky, and the thing I don't like about it is that it's actually really easy to forget to lock the pillars down after all that mucking about. I think the play is actually by design, and it allows the frame to be perfectly centered, but it just feels like a weird design philosophy to me. Finally, I don't like the placement or arm of the brake lever. It's perfectly sufficient, but I catch string on it and it's hard to reach. The turn table rotates waaaay too freely (note that I'm one of a minority that cares about this), so having the ability to quickly lock the table down would be nice. Weaving is more painful than other machines (e.g. Babolat Sensor) without a little table drag. Others (might) disagree.

I should mention/clarify that I've used pretty much all tiers of machine ranging from kind of crappy to top tier, so keep that in mind when reading my feedback. I'm probably more picky at the higher end than a lot of folks would be. Coming from a lower end machine, this thing is going to be really nice.

Edit: I went ahead and adjusted the clamp base before stringing up the Prestige playtest. It seems like there's a bit of a sweet spot in adjustment, and the hex/allen driver that the machine ships with is nice looking, but really ductile. There's a lot of bending of the driver before the adjustment screw actually moves, and as a result, the adjustment sticks/jumps. I'll redo it later with a more rigid bit, but it went from just a whisper loose to really, really hard to get the gravity release to fire. I think this would be fine if you're somewhat mechanically inclined, but this is just a poor operator experience via cheap throw-in tools. I'm just nit-picking, though.

 

[John_Doe]

I pulled the trigger on the Stringmaster Deluxe LE V3. Waiting is going to be the hardest part.

 

[MaxSwing]

Congratulations on your purchase - it is lovely, I had been swinging back and forth on a few machines but went with the DLE v3 as well following DDs post. They were out of stock at the time and took months before coming back in. I have only done a few frames since it arrived but love it - in fairness I havent used any other machine beyond my cheap pros pro drop weight so it was always bound to be better. Everything has been said and so far I dont have any complaints - although I did finally snag a string on the turn table lock and especially having done a couple of badminton racquets as well I can see what DD means about the arms feeling a little long.

 

[John_Doe]

I can't find any of my old stringing tools, does anybody know what tools the Stringmaster Deluxes LE V3 ships with?

 

[fritzhimself]

awl , string cutters, pointed pliers - is at least on his homepage.

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