Tension advice

[haigos]

I ordered some Grapplesnake Tour M8, Tour Sniper, and Alpha, as well as Solinco Confidential — all in 1.25 gauge.

Currently, I’m playing with a Percept 100D that I bought used. It’s still strung with Luxilon Adrenaline at 23.5 kg, as it came from the shop. I really enjoyed it in my first session, but by the second it started to feel a bit launchy. The strings are now notching and no longer snapping back, so the tension has likely dropped and they’re nearing the end of their life. Still, I’ll keep Adrenaline in mind as a reference in case none of the new strings work out.

I also have a brand-new Gravity Tour 98 waiting to be tested.

For those with relevant experience (even anecdotal): what tensions would you recommend for these strings in these rackets?

I don’t have any arm issues, though I occasionally feel some wrist pain with my PA98 if I’m not properly warmed up — one reason I switched to these new rackets.

 

[Trip]

@haigos - IMHO, you want to play the lowest strung stiffness (dynamic tension, or DT) that you can still control, strung with just enough tension to keep the mains snapping back after initial tension drop. From among the strings you listed, static stiffness (from greatest to least) is: Conf > Sniper > M8 >> Alpha. So I would scale your reference tensions accordingly, to reach whatever desired string bed stiffness you feel you need.

For the 100D, especially if you're playing it stock with no extra hitting weight, I wouldn't string C or Sniper above ~50 lbs (~22.5kg), at least not for starters. M8 you might be able to move up a pound or two (~1kg), Alpha maybe 3-4 lbs (~1.5-2kg). Ideally, though, you should probably learn to play with low-mid 40's tension (high teens to low-20s kg's) on the more firm strings, even Alpha at not much more than 50 lbs (~22.5kg) if you can help it.

For the GT98, you can perhaps scale all of that up 1 to 2kg, to help reign in the open pattern a bit, but that's just more tension to lose, and the GT98 also being such a string eater will kill both your tension and physical resilience that much faster, so might need to go to 1.30 gauge, at least in the mains, if not both main and cross, to add in enough durability and/or close up the pattern enough.

Hope some of that helps. Any questions, feel free.