Wilson poor quality control and no way to match these racquets to the original specifications

[Lorenn]

It's not a point of spending the 20 dollars or not, it's the point that why should you spend that? If the racquets had small differences that could be remedied by lead tape. Case in point explain how yonex has such high quality and at the same prices as it's competitors?

It is the point. Three times you bought racquets your way and three times you are unhappy. Yet you keep rewarding Wilson with more of your money. Why should they change if you don't vote with your purchases. You don't have to get Yonex, other firms make high quality spec tight racquets. We have covered Business 101 a few times in the thread, each firm spends money where they like. Yonex is moving more and more production outside Japan, I wonder why.

If you are not willing to spend twenty dollars to get closely matched sticks, why should firms care about having exact spec racquets? If you are not willing to test each racquet and return racquets that don't feel right...If you don't buy Prostock. Why should they spend money to make racquets to a tighter tolerance? If you aren't willing to pay for it, then the service must not be worthwhile to you. SO they won't pay for it either.

Oh and If you buy two racquets from lets say Tennis Warehouse...they lower the price just enough that the matching service is basically free.

 

[Dartagnan64]

Oh and If you buy two racquets from lets say Tennis Warehouse...they lower the price just enough that the matching service is basically free.

Excellent point.

Of course I'm not even sure it's even worthwhile having two matched frames. I've gone away from that practice since it's only been an issue once in my life where I broke a string in an important match and had to use a backup. It's a lot of money for a racketaholic to keep buying two of everything. Typically I re-string before tournaments or league playoffs because I like fresh string bed going into matches. That generally lowers my risk of string breakage in a match. If a string breaks at another time, I just pull out a different racket and play with it.

90% of my play is social and practice. So having matched sticks is largely a waste of money. Buy one frame, restring after a string breaks and play with something else until the racket is strung again. And voila, all these concerns go away.

 

[beltsman]

FWIW my new Head racquet came in exactly on spec for weight today (300g on the dot).

 

[Chalkdust]

It is the point. Three times you bought racquets your way and three times you are unhappy. Yet you keep rewarding Wilson with more of your money. Why should they change if you don't vote with your purchases. You don't have to get Yonex, other firms make high quality spec tight racquets. We have covered Business 101 a few times in the thread, each firm spends money where they like. Yonex is moving more and more production outside Japan, I wonder why.

Agree that those of us who care should vote with our wallets. I personally will never buy Wilson again due to frustration with their QC, even though I like some of their racquets.

Of course I'm not even sure it's even worthwhile having two matched frames.

It's worthwhile if you live in a hot and humid climate, and are a heavy sweater. I switch between several racquets while I'm playing as the grip gets wet and slippery, and I want them all to feel the same.

 

[Dartagnan64]

It's worthwhile if you live in a hot and humid climate, and are a heavy sweater. I switch between several racquets while I'm playing as the grip gets wet and slippery, and I want them all to feel the same.

That is something I've never experienced so i'll take your word. I play in cool moist climate (PNW) and warm dry climate (Palm desert). So the hot and humid thing doesn't resonate for me. But I can see it being an issue.

I do remember golfing in that kind of weather many years ago in Myrtle Beach. Had to buy a rosin bag so i could grip the club.

I'm happy for rec play to pull out a different frame and play with it. League or tournament matches would be a different story but that's not the majority of my play. I'd rather use the money on a different frame since I like trying new things

 

[tsamo]

I love my RF97 but it was way off spec. It should be 340 grams unstrung and mine came in at 352 grams!!
With overgrip and dampener it comes at about 371 grams total.

 

[Lorenn]

I love my RF97 but it was way off spec. It should be 340 grams unstrung and mine came in at 352 grams!!
With overgrip and dampener it comes at about 371 grams total.

It would be interesting to see how well various makers did over the years...assuming scale is reasonably calibrated 3.5% off spec. Last Head racquet I ordered arrived at exact estimate for strung weight. Ok I think it was off by one gram, but zero ounces. Issue is strings have different weights.

Prince Beast 98 O3 arrived at 11.1 ounces versus estimate of 11.2 strung weight. 314 grams versus 317.5...Not really precise as string can vary greatly in weight. Assuming I picked standard string it is less than a percent off..

Head Speed MP arrived a 313 grams strung versus estimated 318 by TW. So about 1.5% off.

Maybe a thread of numbers from people who use racquet matching service might help to compare vendors.

 

[Chalkdust]

It would be interesting to see how well various makers did over the years...assuming scale is reasonably calibrated 3.5% off spec. Last Head racquet I ordered arrived at exact estimate for strung weight. Ok I think it was off by one gram, but zero ounces. Issue is strings have different weights.

Prince Beast 98 O3 arrived at 11.1 ounces versus estimate of 11.2 strung weight. 314 grams versus 317.5...Not really precise as string can vary greatly in weight. Assuming I picked standard string it is less than a percent off..

Maybe a thread of numbers from people who use racquet matching service might help to compare vendors.

I always measure unstrung and without over grip/dampener, since those other things can vary.

My current sticks (Yonex), purchased about 4 years ago, arrived at: 309gm, 309gm, 310gm, 311gm. Spec is 310gm. Pretty darn good!

Earlier this year I demo'd a Wilson. Spec also 310gm, racquet I got was 313gm. Ok, not too bad. I liked it enough to buy one. The one I bought came in at 303gm. So 10gm difference between the one I demo'd and the one I bought. I won't be buying any more of them, and sold the one I did buy.

 

[Lorenn]

I always measure unstrung and without over grip/dampener, since those other things can vary.

My current sticks (Yonex), purchased about 4 years ago, arrived at: 309gm, 309gm, 310gm, 311gm. Spec is 310gm. Pretty darn good!

Earlier this year I demo'd a Wilson. Spec also 310gm, racquet I got was 313gm. Ok, not too bad. I liked it enough to buy one. The one I bought came in at 303gm. So 10gm difference between the one I demo'd and the one I bought. I won't be buying any more of them, and sold the one I did buy.

Yonex seems close to +-2 grams on every racquet. That is under 1% difference. Your Wilson was 7 grams off... or about 2.25%.

 

[Chalkdust]

Yonex seems close to +-2 grams on every racquet. That is under 1% difference. Your Wilson was 7 grams off... or about 2.25%.

Matching spec is nice, but to me the more important metric is how close the racquets are to each other. I swap between racquets while playing (sweaty hands/grips), so need them to feel the same.

My 4 Yonex's are all within 2gm of one another, and I can't feel any difference when switching between them.

The 2 Wilson's I tried were 10gm different and felt different to me also. So that killed any chance of considering a permanent switch to the Wilson, for me anyway. I have no confidence that if I bought 4 of them, I could make them all feel the same.

 

[Yamin]

I posted this in the Blade Pro thread and not one person acted. Leave reviews on Wilson's website. They don't get filtered. You just have to verify your email. If no one complains anywhere but the TW forums about QC no one will ever care. All people do here is reward Wilson for their poor QC by buying more. Worst case they'll send them back and say nothing.

Make the problem visible and they may do something about it one day. It doesn't have to be a 1 star review either.... you can say it's a nice racket but QC is bad.

Out of all the blade versions and blade reviews for them there's ONE that has a mention of QC. Do your part.

 

[Peter126]

If any of the advertised parameters is outside the tolerance you are entitled to get a replacement.
Currently the advertised parameters are balance and weight (I don't see other specs written on the frame besides headsize and stringpattern on mine), Wilson doesn't state swingweight IIRC.
Don't know Wilson tolerances but Babolat did state their tolerances once...
Weight ±7g
Stiffness ±3RA
Balance ±7mm
Swingweight ±10kg·cm²

And the sad fact is that such margins make your chance of getting an unmatchable pair quite likely...
It is how it is...

Yesterday i measured a new Clash Pro Silver because it just didn´t feel right. Actual/spec were: Weight-300/310 SW-314/322 Balance 32,5/31,5 cm.
So it is actually much closer to a Clash 100: Weight-300/295 SW-314/312 Balance 32,5/32 cm.

I have a similar experience with a Clash 100L which I bought used for my daughter, it turned out to be slightly heavier and have a higher SW than a Clash 100???
It seems like Wilson has a problem with mixing up the racquets in the paint shop??

 

[smithie]

Yesterday i measured a new Clash Pro Silver because it just didn´t feel right. Actual/spec were: Weight-300/310 SW-314/322 Balance 32,5/31,5 cm.
So it is actually much closer to a Clash 100: Weight-300/295 SW-314/312 Balance 32,5/32 cm.

I have a similar experience with a Clash 100L which I bought used for my daughter, it turned out to be slightly heavier and have a higher SW than a Clash 100???
It seems like Wilson has a problem with mixing up the racquets in the paint shop??

Its funny you mention this. I was having a conversation with my clubs teaching pro this week about the clash as that's his daily driver for coaching and he said that he tested the clash back when it was in the funky prototype PJ and loved it, so asked the Wilson rep what model it was and bought two of them when they became available. When he received and played with them, he was convinced they felt wildly different to the prototype racket, so put them on the diagnostic machine to find out the specs matched a completely different model (I can't remember which way around it was but the two models in question were the Clash 100 & Clash Tour/Pro). When he quizzed the Wilson rep, he was adamant that the new rackets were the exact same model as the prototype, needless to say he returned the two rackets and got replacements of the model he liked which were in spec second time around. So either the QC was wildly off or they got mixed up in the factory as you might have thought.

 

[crobison]

I always measure unstrung and without over grip/dampener, since those other things can vary.

My current sticks (Yonex), purchased about 4 years ago, arrived at: 309gm, 309gm, 310gm, 311gm. Spec is 310gm. Pretty darn good!

Earlier this year I demo'd a Wilson. Spec also 310gm, racquet I got was 313gm. Ok, not too bad. I liked it enough to buy one. The one I bought came in at 303gm. So 10gm difference between the one I demo'd and the one I bought. I won't be buying any more of them, and sold the one I did buy.

Yesterday i measured a new Clash Pro Silver because it just didn´t feel right. Actual/spec were: Weight-300/310 SW-314/322 Balance 32,5/31,5 cm.
So it is actually much closer to a Clash 100: Weight-300/295 SW-314/312 Balance 32,5/32 cm.

I have a similar experience with a Clash 100L which I bought used for my daughter, it turned out to be slightly heavier and have a higher SW than a Clash 100???
It seems like Wilson has a problem with mixing up the racquets in the paint shop??

I am not surprised, Wilson's quality control is shameful, I had 2 Wilson Pro Staff 97 Counterveil and the 2 were totally different, I had a Racquet customizer look at them both and he basically said "I can try to match the specs on one of the racquets, but the other one is not even close" I wrote 2 letters to Wilson about the issue and basically they sent me a new wilson pro staff 97 tuxedo version, which I hate, so basically I sold it. Sent another letter to Wilson about how bad their quality control is and they sent me a 25% discount on the next purchase of racquets.. So basically what I ended up doing was selling all my racquets, tennis warehouse honored the 25 percent from Wilson and purchased 2 Wilson Pro Staff V.13 matched to the specs on the website.. Happy with these 2 and the specs are on.

 

[PhxRacket]

Anecdotally, the qc has improved from the cv pro staffs to v13.

 

[lelopez]

Wilson gets too bad of a reputation in these boards. Yes they could probably do better, but high volume manufacturing is a difficult beast to tame. You'll be hard pressed to get the exact numbers that are advertised on most racquets out there. Most of the time these values are average values extracted from an LRIP (low rate, initial production) run, and constant change in supply materials, moving of production lines, location, new machines, etc. will change these numbers slightly over the production lifetime.

But, as it has been said before here, when you look at % variation, they end up being small numbers that have been deemed acceptable for production release. If Wilson is OK with releasing racquets for general sale with 10% variation, and that's what you get, then QC is doing their job. That is a business/yield decision, not a QC slip. One potential solution would be for manufacturers to clearly identify a +\- % associated with each advertised spec so the consumer is better informed about what they end up getting.

I've always been a Wilson guy, but have learned to reset expectation based on the changing of the times. I feel that the chance of getting two racquets similar in specs used to be better 20-25yrs ago, but now I somewhat expect them to have a larger variation. That way I'm never disappointed. The days of "matched pair" offerings like what they did with the Tour90 and nCode90 are long gone (although I think Pro Labs is doing this again) If you absolutely need that, closest thing available is TW's matching service where you pay a little more, just like you would in the electronics industry if you wanted 1% tolerance resistors as opposed to 10%.

But numbers are just numbers, I much rather go by feel and how the racquet plays. If I have two racquets and like the feel of one more than the other, I'll try to get the off one closer to the one I like. If that is not possible nailing the numbers DNRO (dead nuts right on), then I find a compromise of what is good enough. I've learned that strings, tensions, and playing conditions have a far larger impact in how I'm playing and feeling the ball than perfectly spec'd racquets.

 

[penguin]

Feature not bug. If you use the racquet matching you can get the old experience of being able to choose between different weights of the same racquet- more options available. You can also find a "gem" of a racquet that is especially good without knowing why. Young pros who need consistency between 20 racquets to win and can't access a matching service I can understand playing with Yonex (or technifibre?) for the consistency. But for amateurs who only actually need maybe two racquets anyway? Probably reduces repetitive strain to have a bit of variation ;-)

tldr: take what you get and like it. Wilson racquets are played with by Federer and you are lucky you are allowed to buy them at all!!

 

[ron schaap]

Yesterday i measured a new Clash Pro Silver because it just didn´t feel right. Actual/spec were: Weight-300/310 SW-314/322 Balance 32,5/31,5 cm.
So it is actually much closer to a Clash 100: Weight-300/295 SW-314/312 Balance 32,5/32 cm.

I have a similar experience with a Clash 100L which I bought used for my daughter, it turned out to be slightly heavier and have a higher SW than a Clash 100???
It seems like Wilson has a problem with mixing up the racquets in the paint shop??

you kniw what? I have also these issues with the new special silver edition 100 tour. It differs 8mm with my older clash 100 tour! However my stringer who measured it told me that this a nirmal tolerance and probably because both are from a different batch. To make them equal he would have to add weight to both my clashes which i dont want because to me they are heavy enough.

 

[RVT]

We all know that these companies manufacture in china and the quality control is a disaster

I'm in a different industry, but a lot of the manufacturing processes and materials are the same. My general thoughts:

• China will do as good or as bad a job as you pay for with respect to QC... It's not COO that matters, it's the parameters set by the manufacturer
• if you want rackets that are relatively close, try to buy them at the same time. There are a lot of variables, from the raw materials to the molds, to the factory workers themselves. Obviously some manufacturers seem to have better controls than others, and can have more consistency from batch-to-batch.
• Yonex likely is going to have a higher level of consistency, in large part because of their close relationship with Toray. In terms of quality, they're probably the best of the large brands (shame I've never hit with one I've actually liked)

 

[jmacdaununder2]

Yep, as noted before, racquet ‘quality control‘ is nothing more than what percentage of non target spec racquets a company is prepared to foist upon the public. The concept of ‘factory seconds’ being sold more cheaply seems to be virtually non existent; I guess they don’t want to sully their brand image by openly admitting to the production of imperfect specimens.

 

[RVT]

Well, it's not just fallout rate during production, though that's one factor. I think the bigger difference is how much variance they allow in the raw materials (the tighter the variance, the more you pay),how many rackets they'll make on the same mold, how often they change the bits drilling the holes...etc...

 

[ron schaap]

Well, it's not just fallout rate during production, though that's one factor. I think the bigger difference is how much variance they allow in the raw materials (the tighter the variance, the more you pay),how many rackets they'll make on the same mold, how often they change the bits drilling the holes...etc...

In the past there was a brand that produced racquets with a garantee of no tolerance, meaning the rackets of the same model were the same to the gram. This was fischer that produced it racquets in Austria.
So it is possible. These racquets were not overly expensive too. If you notice the full price of a new Clash than wilson should do the same.
To bad Fischer only produces skis and ski boots now.

 

[Gee]

In the past there was a brand that produced racquets with a garantee of no tolerance, meaning the rackets of the same model were the same to the gram. This was fischer that produced it racquets in Austria.
So it is possible. These racquets were not overly expensive too. If you notice the full price of a new Clash than wilson should do the same.
To bad Fischer only produces skis and ski boots now.

Pacific took over the tennis department of Fischer. They also apply the zero tolerance technology.

 

[Automatix]

In the past there was a brand that produced racquets with a garantee of no tolerance, meaning the rackets of the same model were the same to the gram. This was fischer that produced it racquets in Austria.
So it is possible. These racquets were not overly expensive too. If you notice the full price of a new Clash than wilson should do the same.
To bad Fischer only produces skis and ski boots now.

I don't understand why you're referring to 2 things from different eras - "no tolerance" was introduced by Fischer when their racquets were made in China.
As for "no tolerance"...
Pacific's "no tolerance" wasn't to the gram - https://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/index.php?threads/pacific-no-tolerance-fischer-no-tolerance.454535/
Since it was a take over one can assume Fischer's policy was similar - and if tl;dr it's +/-3 grams.