Tonic + breaking out of the blue, bad string?

[martini1]

Got a hybrid string job on my ADPC. Tonic+ mains, Poly Crosses. Both at low 50's tension. The strings are pretty "new" as this is not my main stick. Very little sign of wear, especially on the gut. Had this for about 4 months or so.

A couple of days ago I was doing some serve practice and suddenly I have noticed the gut is broken, two of mains were snapped at 5 o'clock right at the holes.

What gives? I don't think my strings were exposed to a lot of moisture at all. I hit pretty hard sometimes but I am not a string breaker at all. Is this just a faulty string or bad string job??

 

[scotus]

If it was on your frame for 4 months (whether used much or not), you can't really fault the string or stringer.

Check to see the 5 o'clock position whether it was where the cross was tied off around the main. Perhaps it is where the main comes out to the side at a very sharp angle. If the latter is the case, you can use a teflon or nylon tubing or a power pad to keep the same thing from happening in the future.

 

[WhiteStripes]

Tonic+ (16) is the only gut (and I've tried basically all of them, even stuff like Global and Gaucho) I've ever had that's randomly popped on me while it was just sitting in the bag doing nothing. String only had an hour or so of use on it. Have no idea how or why it happened, although it happened only once. That said, still love VS/Tonic and continue to use them.

Never had an issue at the shoulders of my racquet (and I don't use power pads to round out the edges, although they may help), but I agree that you may want to check around your grommets to see if there's any possible sharp edge that could dig into the string. If so, aside from replacing the grommet strip, you could use tubing as mentioned by the prior poster.

 

[martini1]

Well can u guys tell me what this is? I am not a stringer so I don't know if this is the sharp angle thing.

 

[martini1]

And the last 2 string jobs I had (pro hurricane main + VS cross; BB main + VS cross) both lasted almost a year until I decide to cut them and restring.

 

[scotus]

Looks like it snapped at the knot.

Hard to tell. Perhaps the stringer pulled or yanked the string too hard while making the knot.

 

[star 5 15]

About 4-5 years ago when I was using VS Touch 16g in the babolat pure control I had a lot of issues of the string breaking at a sharp angle like that. It was always the same spot. I was sponsored by babolat at the time and they had me cut out the string job by the grommet holes with packaging tape over the stringbed to keep it intact. I would usually send 4-5 back at a time and they would give me a set of gut everytime it would happen. Now looking back I think that a powerpad would have solved the issue. Also as far as knots go with gut. I do not tie them dow like I would a poly or synthetic. I cut about a cm long piece off the tail and place in-between the racquet and the knot. That way the knot doesnt slide into the hole like what looks like has happened here. But keep in mind my issues were with FRESH gut not gut that sat around for 4-5 months. No one is at all fault here. I would recommend telling your stringer to care more for the gut when tying knots and things but do not blame them. good luck

 

[martini1]

Thanks for the advice. I think from now on I would switch back on using the gut/multi on the cross. That should solve 90% of the problem I hope.