Hello all. First post. After some demo'ing (and finding a lot to like about the Nanoray 300) I am graduating myself from an Arcsaber 002 (which I bought on recommendation of racquet sport shop as a middle-of-the-road starting point; was nice, but now feels too flexy) to a Nanoray 100 (unfortunately wasn't available to demo, but all accounts indicate that it is pretty close to the NR300), I am now faced with the choice to choose a string for my badminton racquet for the first time. (FYI, many years ago, I was very much a tennis enthusiast.) Yonex strings (I believe the entire catalog) are the choices I have. They all seem reasonable in price. So I'm at a loss at what to get for a new middle-of-the-road starting point from which I can start to assess what I need yet again. Any particular suggestions for type and tension? I'm not sure of the right questions to ask, so please feel free to feedback and I'll try to do so as well to the best of my abilities. Thanks in advance.
There are multiple aspects of strings, such as material, the matrix of the string and most importantly gauge. The thinner the gauge (thickness), you'll "feel" the shuttle more, and in my experience they feel the best. This provides an obvious problem of thinner strings being worn out a lot faster than thicker strings. Some popular thick Yonex string include: BG-65 (.70mm/22Gauge), BG65Ti, NBG95 The notoriously thinner onces include: BG-66, BG-66UM, NBG-98 The strings that aren't too thin include: BG-80, BG-80P, BG-85 So now you must ask yourself if budget is a problem in the long run. If it is, picking BG-65 is probably your safest bet as it provides long durability and should be the cheapest string to go with. If budget is not a problem consider how they feel. String feels are different for everyone and I cannot say for sure that you'll like what I personally like. However, to get you started with something, I will share some personal experience. started with BG-65: Thick and Dull, lost too much tension that I hated it before it would even start to fray. switched to BG-80: not too thick, stayed with this the longest, and sometimes still string my spares with this string, but BG-80P has a certain "ompphh" to it that makes it better. I liked BG-66Ultimax the most as it was extremely thin and it just felt good when I was hitting the shots. As I have no equipment to actually measure my shuttle speeds, I can only say that playing with BG-66UM "felt" like my smashes were faster, and shots more accurate. I have recently switched to BG-80P because even though I string my own rackets, putting on a new set of BG-66UM every other week becomes fairly expensive very fast. BG-80Power in my opinion provides a good balance between cost and performance. I must emphasize string preferences are extremely personal and I can only recommend that you find out for yourself what is right.
Thank you for taking the time to attempt to answer my question. In the two days since the inquiry, there have been developments. I went to the badminton pro-shop for the NR100 that they still been advertising online, but found that like other places, it had actually long been sold out. The pro-shop was very apologetic about the website misinformation, and they made it up to me by giving me such a terrific deal on the NR300 that I could not possibly refuse. So I ended up buying a Nanoray 300. They did, however, ask me to pick a higher-end string to help out with their margin. The deal I got on the racquet was quite good, and therefore I honored this request. They pushed the Nanogy BG-99. And that's what I bought, having known prior that it was top-of-the-line (I normally gravitate toward middle-of-the-line for the best value, and the BG-80 Pro was at the top of my consideration), and had read a thread here showing that it was well-regarded. I figured it couldn't hurt. I had them string it to the maximum warranty-acceptable 24 pounds. Hopefully this will work for me. I'll find out tomorrow night.
