Anyone have a line on a new Ektelon More Attack? A friend broke his backup and is now down to one stick. I think he has the SSM grip. Help. Thanks.
Anybody have new, never been used TT Warriors for sale? I've checked most sites for stock and haven't found any. TomKat's site shows them but an email to him bounced back - mailbox full. I need four racquets. TomKat can you help? Thanks.
I saw the other thread on String comparisons concerning multifilament strings, but rather than hijack that thread, here's a new thread.
Multifilament strings were invented to copy, or mimic the high performance properties of the original natural (not synthetic) multifilament - namely gut. It's made from multiple strands of processed beef serosa (think sausage casings). It's stiffness (~100 lbs/in) is the lowest of any string material, multi's are typically 180 to 200 lbs/in, and it's playability or resiliency (the high performance part) decays the least with time. Sad thing about the synthetics in general and multifilaments in particular is how steep the decay curve is, or how quick the "pop" goes away accompanied by a large tension drop. So the typical scenario for most people is you get your racquet restrung with your favorite multi and notice right off the bat how "powerful" the racquet feels (compared to the same racquet before the strings broke) and you pat yourself on the back and remember why you like this string - for the power. Ten to twenty hours of playing time later the pop is gone and now you're playing with dead strings (for weeks) until they break again. And the cycle repeats.
With gut, the power, pop, playability pretty much stays until the string breaks - i.e. the playability lifetime of gut is many times that of any synthetic string material. You get it restrung and you won't notice a big difference in power from what you had. That's the good part. The bad part is the price ($25 to $35 for a pack of string) and the fact that not many racquetball stringers have ever used gut - it does take some extra care during installation.
Overall price of a string job can be reduced by using a hybrid mix, half synthetic and half gut which maintains much of the quality of the gut to the stringjob at a reduced cost.
On my Ektelon racquet using a 12 mains and 16 cross pattern I can get by with 18 feet for the mains and 13 feet for the crosses. There's a bunch of Ektelon O Port and Speedport racquets that can do the same. Cutting a 40 foot coil of natural gut into three 13 foot 4 inch sections allows me to string three times in the crosses cutting the NG material cost of one string job to $8.34 ($25 pack), add in $2 for half a pack of your favorite monofilament nylon (Babolat Super Fine Play, Forten Sweet, Ashaway SuperKill, Gosen OG-Sheep Micro, etc) and your total material cost is still under $11 - compare that to a full up $15 multi job whose performance lifetime is a third or less of the gut hybrid.
Hint for stringers out there, tie-off the crosses on the crosses so if the mains break you can replace them and keep the NG crosses in place - no need to throw away a good set of Natural Gut. I've replace the mains twice on one stick and was able to get 36 days of play before the NG crosses broke vs a typical 12 days of play time.
Now you just need to find a stringer who can do gut. Good luck!:)
The alternate stringing patterns that Ektelon introduced on the O3 White (14 x 17 and 12 x 17) also can be used on the Triple Threat Warrior, More Dominant, O3 Shark, and O3 Diablo. I've been using the 12 mains and 17 crosses pattern on my Triple Threat Warriors and it works great. Benefits: An increase in power that can be felt. And with the two new stringing patterns more string jobs from a reel of string. With the old pattern of 16 mains and 19 crosses a reel would net 18 string jobs, with the 14 x 17 pattern a reel nets 20 string jobs, and with the 12 x 17 pattern 22 string jobs can be obtained from a single 660 foot reel.
