Thanks. I'm wondering what makes these frames so hugely popular if you have to modify them so much?
I think part of it is loyalty. There are plenty of tennis players who love head rackets and have gone through the different iterations of them and continue to stick to Head. They do build a quality product afterall.
Personally, I am going to have to add quite a bit of weight and do a lot of customization to just about any racket on the market to get it to my desired spec. There are plenty of posters on this forum for whom that applies. So having to add lead tape isn't really that big a deal, I'd have to do it with any racket from company X, Y, or Z anyway. Head's line of prestige rackets though continues to be a high risk/high reward line. They tend to have smaller sweetspots with a high, worthwhile reward (heavy ball with great feel that is comfortable), provided you can hit the sweetspot. Rackets by other makers that have similar specs don't compare in this department in my opinion. Bear in mind that its not only about specs, as you can take different frames and customize them to the same specs yet they may still play differently.
On a side note, the one thing that really gets people about Head's new Youtek prestige is torsional stability. They do have a smaller sweetspot than previous versions in my opinion. For arguments sake, lets say the sweet spot is a circle with a two diameter circle (Racket A). If that requires too much precision, then you could perhaps play with a racket that has a four inch sweetspot (Racket B). On slightly offcenter hits, Racket B will provide a better ball and the racket will not twist much in your hand, however, if you can consistently hit the two inch sweetspot of racket A, the ball produced will be better than any ball produced when you hit the central two inches of Racket B's sweetspot. Thats probably why some people have a love/hate relationship with this thing.
