Have you ever thought about replacing your factory strings?

You may have spent a fair bit of time researching and experimenting with the latest rackets to find the right one that suits your game. That’s all great in itself, but have you spent the same amount of time researching strings and how they are installed? From our experience, strings are often an afterthought! this always surprises us as strings make up 50% of the racket. Strings are the engine of the racket and they really do influence on how well that new racket can play. Many players just keep the strings in until they break which may never happen!

You may also be thinking that because you’ve bought a new racket that the strings are brand new and have been strung correctly so therefore there’s no need to change them. Unfortunately that is not the case which this blog will reveal.

Factory rackets have not been strung professionally!

Firstly factory strung rackets are pumped out in volume to meet the demands of the manufacturer. Often there will be hundreds of thousands of rackets that need to be strung up by the workers in the factories. A racket strung up by a professional stringer will take anywhere between 20-30 minutes. As factory workers are under such tight deadlines they will have to complete a racket every 5-10 minutes! This subsequently results in many shortcuts being taken which results in the strings being tensioned nowhere near correctly. The machines used are often very poor quality to save the manufacturer money.

As a result those factory strings in your racket have not been strung to a good standard. They also will play poorly and in many cases can be dead on arrival. They may look new but they will have been sitting in a shop or factory for a very long time! Strings lose tension over time even when not being used and the effects of this are explained below.

Have a look at this video below to see what we mean about the rackets not being strung professionally.

The problems that you will have with these poorly strung rackets!

Here is a picture of one of the factory strung rackets that we measured using our tension measuring device as used by grand slam stringers.

You can see that the dynamic tension is extremely low as the device is displaying restring. This racket has never even hit a ball! With such a low dynamic tension this means that the strings are dead and they have lost their elasticity which results in loss of power, control and an increased risk of arm injury!

We always recommend cutting out the factory strings straightaway and going to a professional stringer to get the best advice on what string and tension will suit your game. Click on our restring guide for more advice.

If you want a racket stringing professionally feel free to contact Mike via his page by clicking here. A racket restringing postal service is available if you live far away!

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