Those of you who have rackets that have been marked SP are rackets that have been made for Singapore sales. I got an e-mail from a fellow shuttler that mailed Yonex Japan and asked. SP stands for Singapore. I hope this clears up any confusions that you might have had.

Yes we know Byro...I think kwun already emailed Yonex....and CN stands for China, DN or DM can't remember.. stands for Denmark, and so on...

Correction: SP is not just for Singapore market and SP doesn't stand for Singapore. Yonex rackets sold in Malaysia also have SP on them.

Then what does it stand for? The reply from the Yonex guy in Japan says SP stands for Singapore.

I do not know what SP stands for but you can think of it as designation for different region of the world. e.g. Proton Wira cars are sold with the badge GLX is oversea.

You have a point.... To be honest i'm still doubtful over what the Yonex guy said. It doesn't seem logical that all rackets in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia that i've seen are all marked SP that means Singapore. Just doesn't convince me... But doesn't really matter anyway

Just for the record: I bought a MP-100 from Germany. It said "Made in Japan" (which I have heard should mean good quality) at the end of the handle, but the serial number starts with GR, which I guess would mean Germany. So, it's made in Japan especially for export to the German market or what? Or is the serial number added by Yonex in Germany?

Let me try to clearify this matter. SP do stand for Singapore. Singapore Yonex is authorized distributor for certain Asia countries such as Malaysia, India, HK and Indonesia. However, Racket that go to China, Taiwan and Thailand are not from Singapore, therefore you will not see SP on the rackets.

I hope this will help!

BTW, NEW Yonex rackets Muscle Power 77 and Mucles Power 44 will be available in the US in Feb!! Price is lower than the Muscle Power 100.

david, i bought some aerotus rackets from HK in 1992 and they have no SP on them. Can u shed some light onto why HK have both SP and non-SP rackets?

There are some imported Yonex racquets in HK, i.e. racquets which are not from the authorized distributer, therefore you will find Yonex racquets with SP as a result.

As far as I know, there are two reasons for importing racquets not directly from the authoirzed distributers : (1) for new models, (2) lower price.

It may be SP logo didn't exist at that you bought the racquets.
Can anybody remember when "SP" racquets first appeared?

ricky, thanks for the reply to my question. However, i'm still unable to connect the dots. You said SP rackets found in HK are from non-authorized yonex distributors but david said earlier that HK is one of singapore yonex authorized outlet. It is not that important now since china owns HK. If there is a difference, the readers may have a better negotiating leverage on buying non-authorized yonex rackets.

cooler

SP marked rackets came out a very long time ago, at least in my life it did. I think it was about or at least 10 years ago. The first racket i bought which was my Carb 8 from Malaysia is marked SP.

i live in thailnad, when I ask the official distributor in thailand, they said if the racket is imported by the authorized yonex distributors, it will print a contry code on the end of the serial number to declear that the duty of this country has been already pay. therefore all the racket bought from the authorized yonex distributors in thailand will have "TH" in the end of the serial number. And my T-10 also has an "TW" printed because i've bought that racket from Taiwan. And i'm also understand what Ricky has said. Because when i went to the distributor in thailand to get one MP-100 for my friend in Taiwan. I'm suprise that the racket has been sold out(i've saw 40 of them the day before...), therefore i ask them what's going on, and they said there is a guy came yesterday and bought 100 MP-100 at one time(the price is approx. 88.37USD plus the BG-85 string, a T-shirt, and yonex socks), therefore if I want to buy MP-100, u will have to wait for about 2 months(by the way, not only MP-100, all the latest recket was gone. Although i'm not against this kind of business, but i'm still quite angry about that, the distributor should at least save some for the Thai customer >_<, therefore i gave them an hard lecture...although it's not totally their fault....

haaaaaaa, still have to wait for the racket...> <

Ops, sorry ! I've made a big mistake - what I mean is those racquet from authorized distributor will have SP marked in the shaft. For those imported units, they may come from various places, e.g. Taiwan, Japan.

When I started playing, none of the carbonex racquets had SP.
So somewhere around late 80's SP started appearing.