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String Selector Map 2008: The Right Plotline

Our exclusive listing and chart will help each of your customers plot a course to the perfect string for his game.

By Dave Bone

There are about 600 strings on the market today. And while selecting the right string for your customers from that pool may seem like a near impossible task, our exclusive Guide to Strings should be able to help you find exactly the right product that will help their game.

Our annual guide is designed to cut down on the amount of time you spend searching for that perfect string. In past years, we’ve listed in these pages the vital stats and test results of all 600 or so strings. But for this issue, since the vast majority of those strings don’t change from year to year, we’ve decided to streamline things a bit and list just those strings that are new to the market this year or otherwise haven’t been on our list in the past.

The complete, sortable listing of more than 600 strings is available here. You can also find a lot of other stringing and customizing information and tools that will help you help run your business effectively at RacquetTECH.com.

The chart below, which is also on our website, plots key information for all 600 strings. Use this chart, combined with the full listing of strings, to find your customer’s current string, and to then find either similar strings or strings with other characteristics that your customer desires. To find the string that goes with a dot on the chart, you simply need to note the dot’s coordinates, then look them up in the full listings on the website, which are sorted by stiffness.

How to Find The Perfect String

To help your customer, first find the current string they’re playing with on the full listing of strings and note the specs for “stiffness” and “tension loss.” Go to the chart and find the dot that corresponds to those stiffness and tension loss coordinates.

• If your customer generally is happy with their current string, dots in the same neighborhood (i.e., close vertical axes to the right or left) will likely play similarly (perhaps with better durability or cost).
• If your customer is looking to change, then move out of the neighborhood (i.e. vertical axes farther to the right or left).
• If your customer likes the feel of the current string but doesn’t think it holds tension well enough, choose a string farther down the same axis.

A few other points to keep in mind:

• Stiffness, which is the horizontal axis, is the most important factor in string feel. On our chart, softer strings are to the left, stiffer strings are to the right.
• Strings that lose more tension are at the top; those that lose less tension are at the bottom.
• All strings on the same vertical line should feel about the same, regardless of the tension.
• The amount of tension loss affects the consistency of the feel. (“Consistency” is relative and depends on player sensitivity, string durability, and amount and style of play.)
• Strings at different locations on the same horizontal line will feel different from each other.
• Stringbed power increases to the left. Stringbed control increases to right.
• “Arm-friendly” strings are to the left.
• “Feedback” intensity (shock) increases to the right.
• To look up a hybrid combination, you must look up each string separately. If it is a pre-packaged hybrid, most packaging indicates the name of each string.

New Strings (Sorted by Stiffness)

This listing of 87 strings shows the latest product available and doesn’t include the vast majority of strings on the market today. For the complete listing of nearly 600 strings that your customers can choose from, visit our website. Then use that complete listing, combined with our charts both here and on the website, to find the perfect string for your players.

Test Procedure

All strings in our test were tensioned to 62 pounds and allowed to sit for 200 seconds. Then the string was hit five times with a force equivalent to hitting a 120 mph serve. The tension loss represents the amount of the relaxation over both time and impact.

The stiffness value is a calculation derived from the amount of force created at impact to stretch the string. Lower values represent softer stings and lower impact forces. Higher values represent stiffer strings and higher impact forces.

See all articles by Dave Bone

About the Author

Dave Bone is the CEO of the U.S. Racquet Stringers Association, and co-publisher of Racquet Sports Industry magazine.

From the September 2008 issue
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