Badminton racquets have been getting lighter, from close to 140g to today's 80-94g. This is due to new and better materials. The reduction in weight comes mainly from the shaft and the handle. Older, heavier, racquets were mostly head-light racquets. Newer, lighter, racquets are more head-heavy than the older racquets, mainly because it's increased swingweight is necessary to offset its drastic reduction in weight. With the increasing use of overgrips and all shades and weight of replacement grips, the racquet balance point is more often than not shifted from its designed balance point. A racquet that is designed to be head-heavy, like the AT700, can be transformed into a very head-light racquet by adding a heavy replacement grip. This problem is further compounded by the tendency of the owner wanting to use every last inch of a replacement grip, which gives rise to an additional problem of making the final grip almost round, besides drastically changing the designed b/p. This often results in the chosen racquet not exhibiting its designed objective. The after market for grips is very lucrative and its sheer variety and ubiquity doesn't help. If you add additional weight onto the original grip with either an overgrip or a replacement grip, your racquet b/p will shift downwards, roughly about 1.1cm to 1.2cm for every 5g increase in grip weight. Your racquet's total weight will be more and your racquet will feel more head-light. This will make the racquet a little more comfortable to hold and control but you will lose power, especially if your racquet is designed to be light and more head-heavy. If you must add additional grips to your racquet my advice is to look for a racquet which is more head-heavy than what you are accustomed to. You then add the extra grip and this will bring back the type of even balance or head-light feel you want. But this is a rather silly way to get around one's habit of adding an extra grip.
Would you say that adding an overgrip to a 3U racket is enough to make it into a 2U racket, assuming the 2U racket is used without overgrip? AT500 3U with overgrip feels somewhat too heavy, especially after many hours of usage and absorbing sweat, and i use the whole length of the overgrip....whereas the AT500 without overgrip feels just right. Seems to me that AT500 with overgrip has a swing weight is quite a bit more than MP77 2U, whereas without overgrip, the swing weight difference isn't as pronounced. I read the post on measurements, and know that AT500 should have higher swing weight. I'm thinking using the AT500 with the original grip, and then removing the original grip when it's worn out. Actually, i'd rather remove the original grip first, then use some food wrap on the wood, so that the wood stays clean.
This is preferred but why the food clingwrap? Every time you replace a grip, throw away the old grip and use your fingers to remove any remaining sticky adhesives on the wood. The remaining sticky adhesives can weigh as much as 3g. Best with no clingwrap because its better for the wood to breathe a little on both sides. Clingwrap will add 1g or more. Also don't overlap too much with new grip; about 3mm (1/8") or even less overlap, just shy of seeing the wood, will do. This way you can still feel the 8 sides of the grip, and not end up with a round grip. This minimal overlap of putting on a new grip with leave you with a rather long unused length. This is as it should be, and you should throw it away.
Clingfilm (food wrap) will not add anything near 1g of weight. If you don't use clingfilm, more weight will be added by the remaining sticky residue. And do you really want to pick off all those bits of gummy crap? What a waste of time As for "misconceptions about static balance point", I suggest a completely opposite view. The misconception is that weight on the handle affects the balance significantly. It doesn't, as I explain clearly in this post: http://www.badmintoncentral.com/forums/showpost.php?p=339595&postcount=500 . Many people have argued from experience that static balance does or does not affect the perceived balance of a racket. I say that these assertions are heavily based on personal subjective judgement and therefore cannot be trusted. Besides, whose judgement will you trust? Mine? Eepak's? My argument is clear and does not rely on vague personal assessments of a rackets' "feel". Although, as it happens, I arrive at the same conclusion from my subjective assessment.
If girp size increase by overgrip changes the balance point and feel of the racket,then why not get one size of grip smaller than your usual grip size to compensate?
Thanks for the info. As a golfer and golf equipment ho, I fully understand and agree with what you are saying about the swing weight. How heavy is a typical overgrip like YY SuperGrap or Wilson Pro Overgrip? Thx.
while I agree that the overal change in swing-feel isn't thát earth-shattering great as eepak might state...but your explanation os a little flawed...the "100kgs" added are added éxactly on the center of gravity, or fulcrum, or whatever... overgrip, however light, isn't added onto the fulcrum...so it actually does change the fulcrum. ánd teh swing weight.... it's not a one-variable story... also what definatly does change the b.p. are those bulks people put on the end of their grips for gods knows what reason..
just outta nowhere, pops in my head if we r to consider balance point when a racket hit a bird if we conisder the racket as an extension of the arm and the swing is actually the entire movment of your arm + the racket. wouldn't we put the arm + the racket as a whole in the equation? the movable joins creating the wipping action would be start from yr shoulder to your elbow to the waist to the racket head. in that case.. i would think the grip has little impact on the action as a whole cos the grip is at your wasit and thats one of the lever point.
absolutly right. but it definatly is worth bothering if you know what you wnat in b.p.'s I personally have found the holy-grail in manouvreable rackets..power by swing speed, not swing weight...my ns8k...not that I'm that fast...
If you read my post carefully, you will see that I acknowledge this point. Grip changes the balance of the racket, but only very slightly, because it is applied NEAR the fulcrum.
once moved the bp from 300 to 285 the racket is much different and it feel bad now with a thick grip i wrap onlt 3/4 or 3/5 of the handle, it perform much better smash, clear, etc are done in a better fashion in the next game, i don' think i improve in just 2hrs... just feel, nothing scientific racket is ti10, first was kawasaki repl. grip + overgrip wrapped all the way pass the cone then its babolat woover wrapped to 3/4 oe 3/5 of the handle
but u do have to caculate in the effect that the reason we want to add grip to a racket is so that we have the right grip size and @ the right grip size, it Does improve your game and that is not related to the balance point be shifted down or not
thickness is about the same on both combinations with rpl+over grip i can't even swing pass 3/4 of the court from baseline i don't think my str increase all the sudden either ps. i wouldn't say this is better or worse, but this works for me, played with many other variation of grips as well already, the current configuration is best so far
i guess the change can be bad/good trail and error to see which combination works best then stick with it. see pro double players warp the grip all the way to the cone supposingly that would throw the balance point off by a lot making the racket's characteristic changes. However.. doing so they can grab the racket much higher then normal and now THAT is what i consider an EFFECTIVE way of changing the balance point. plus u see LD and tuf griping only the very last 2 inches of the racket, they'r also changing the balance point to a way that contributs their games most as well. I suppose its allrite to change the way a racket is DESIGNed to be played as long as u'r happy with the changes.
i didnt comment before so i dont view as jumping on taneepak all the time. i think taneepak over exaggerated the importance of grip weight on bp. A thin overgrip adds isignificant mass near the axis of rotation so changes in racket swing moment is unnoticeable. 3g of glue is overblown unless u r pulling the wood chips with the glue. For those users who put on thick or multiple overgrips (eg. >5g), they are generally brute players and bp means little to them. I also dont think people buy rackets with consideraton of bp changes due to overgrip. THE CHOICE OF STRING HAS MORE INFLUENCE ON SWING MOMENT THAN A FOAM TYPE OVERGRIP. SWING MOMENT RULES, NOT B.P. i agree one point, yes, some people do have misconception about static b.p. and u know who
I have a two layers of replacement grip on my racket handle (I removed the original grip). This increases the handle width considerably. I do not notice any difference in the feel of the racket swing (except, of course, that it is now the right size for my hand!). These grips probably total about 10g of added weight. I must find some good overgrips so I can save money.....
I experimented adding 12.5g, 6g, and 3g to the bottom end of a Ti-10 handle. In all instances, the static balance point was lowered and the racket swing speed increased. I know the swing speed increased because often when I swing, I miss the shuttle. This kind of miss doesn't happen with my other unmodified Ti-10's. I finally settled on a permanent weight increase of 3g by filling the hole at the end of the wooden handle with 3g of bathroom silicone sealant. the sealant also acted as a glue for the cap. The end result is the balance point moving from 295mm to 290mm and the racket became my most powerful Ti-10 yet. Now, all my clears going out by a couple of feet, and the smashing power was unprecedented from my own hand.
This is basically what I was thinking about the issue. I think you're being very kind. I haven't seen science this bad since the coolmax discussion. As for static balance point, I think it would mean something if all racquets had identical lengths, grip sizes and construction, etc. Then the materials in the head of the racquet (and strings) would actually change the bp unilaterally and you'd know when you were buying a head-heavy racquet compared to all other racquets. But that fantasy scenario doesn't exist and so bp is irrelevant.
You may have your arguments, but from my experience as a designer of a few racquets, any added weight over the designed racquet, whether at the tip of the frame or the butt, will affect its playability, from very small to significant. Adding weight to even the butt end will affect its sweetspot, by bringing it downwards, although there may be some marginal increase in swingweight. Adding even 0.5g of weight to the tip may increase the swingweight significantly more but would be disastrous for a frame that is designed to cut through air with the least resistance (dorsoventral-like and compressed on the inside and aerodynamic on the outside, ala the E-1000 Vectran racquet). Using two replacement grips or adding an oval grip will increase swingweight-the damn racquet is now heavier-but the feeling is headlight, which is not a problem. But you are still carrying extra weight. But the problem here has more to do with a loss of power because the sweetspot has now been moved downwards, due to the added weight of the grips. If the added weight of the extra grips is marginal and your hand is not that sensitive you may not be able to feel any marginal loss in repulsion power. But there is some power loss.
Sorry for jumping in, but what's the point of trying to pump up credibility of your argument by referring to past incidents that was a fiasco??? (eg Racket that is paint-chip proof but chips anyway) It's like if Nixon's advisor wrote in his Resume "Chief advisor to Nixon on the WaterGate Issue". To add to this topic, most people add on grip to the size tht they are most comfortable holding it. I have not researched into it deeper but my conversations with fellow players and such find that when using extreme different size of grips, may be using different mucle groups (or subgroups) to function. Different muscle groups which may not have the muscle memory or strength as otherwise. So when changing sizes, is the minor change in b.p. or muscle group theory the bigger factor in effectivsness / suitability ? IMHO it is the latter so I do not see the point of telling every one to use grip size as per original factory grip. The Borneon BaddyNUT
