This will be a multi-post piece intended for entertainment and information. My usual disclaimers apply. Because I am doing this for free, people should refrain from crying because of imperfections in my work. For the large number of people who were determined to ignore my posts, I urge you to double your efforts. Please plug your ears, squeeze shut your eyes for the duration of this piece. Introduction Natural gut strings kept some interest in me since I started badminton. But because of high price, the perceived high maintenance, and lower durability, I never found enough motivation to try those out. From what I read of the gut string, I understood they were supposed to be powerful and with good feel. But it was fortunate that I found all the power I needed from synthetic strings long before I had to resort to gut. A further reason that made the gut less attractive to me was the thought that more animals had to die for it. After reading about Zyex strings, I was rather intrigued. It was claimed that Zyex strings had characteristics closest to gut strings. Naturally, this lead me to believe there would be some power advantages to them. Amongst other claims for Zyex include superior tension holding, high durability, and better feel. My interest in the string would be focused entirely on its power. Even though there was sufficient power in my game, I found it impossible to ignore a source of free power. This piece will describe my attempt to extract potential free power from a set of Zyex strings.
No need to think that way. Animals aren't killed just for their guts to make strings. It would have been cooked in the kitchen in some Asian countries if not taken to be made as strings. All I could say is that Natural Gut were the "then" technology before we invented the synthetic ones, which I believe is more economical to manufacture. Some natural strings nowadays are made from plants and vegetables. They are generally softer in feel but are great for defence.
"Some natural strings nowadays are made from plants and vegetables" Do you know of any brands? I might be interested in looking at something like that.
The String The Zyex string came in dark red, had a glossy and rough textured surface. Other than that, it was unremarkable. The red of the string matched quite nicely with the red on the Ti-10 the string would go on. Some how this felt like a good omen. The string was quite thick and I could make out a little the outer ring of small diameter Zyex cores. The cores looked whitish and transparent.
A Stringing Challenge Because of the string thickness, stringing it was quite a challenge. First of all, the string could not be strung at a low tesnion of around 15 lbs that I wanted. The lowest tension the string would stretch was at around 18 lbs. So I settled on 18.5 lbs. Secondly, grommet holes were too small to be shared. So I had to come up with a pattern that minimised grommet sharing. The pattern 16x20 required 2 shared holes at the tie off, and I chose that. At the shared holes, I had to take out the grommets for the strings to fit. The 3 holes on either side of the throat were also too small. Again taking out the grommets helped.
The Pattern The robustness of the string meant that there was little risk of breakage from mis-hitting on the large gaps around the frame. Even though the pattern looked funny, I would find it perfectly useable. Bounce Test Just bouncing a plastic shuttle up and down showed that the string was very bouncy. This would translate to power. But there was no way to know to what extent this translation would take until I try the string out on court. A peculiar characteristic of the string was that it was both bouncy and yet noiceably crisp. This didn't quite make sense to me and I had to keep going back to bounce some more to assure myself I wasn't imagining it. The crispness would have a good chance of producing sharp rifle sounding shots on court. A down side of the string was its weight. It made my head light racket less head light.
http://www.badmintoncentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4310&highlight=Zyex it is old news of more than 5 years ago. If the general public and pro circuit havent accepted it, then u know this string is perfect for CD6. Extra thick string huh? perfect for player who mishit alot...
what a place will BC become when éverybody who tries something out makes a thread about it.... heck, come to think of it I'm going to write a review about: -Powergut 65N -powergur 66N -micropower -wilson pro overgrip -wilson X-tack overgrip -every possible Sotx string -a shitload of rackets but offcourse not all in 1 thread...heck no, I'm going to write each review in a sepparate thread!
As CoolDoo6 doesn't seem to want to tell us exactly which string he is testing, I will take a guess. Ashaway PowerNick 18, which is a 1.15mm squash string
My guess is 1.02mm http://www.ashawayusa.com/ "learn all about zyex" funnily enough..there're no badmintonstrings...and a red squash string edit: ghe...you beat me to it...
A great forum for sharing views. And when people bring back threads from years ago, other people complain about that too.
I'm not saying contributing is bad...heck no, a forum needs to live... but that doesn't mean everybody should make a thread for every single piece of equipment they ever tried... and thread reviving happens to everybody, at some point...
so does that change your old theory about thicker strings? www.badmintonforum.com/vb/showthread.php?t=41259
Zyex strings are hard to make in very fine deniers. Even if they can be made to the fine denier filaments for badminton-and both Ashaway's and the fiber mnufacturer's technology are incapable of doing that today-it is easier to use natural gut which is better than Zyex is or what it can be.
"Ashaway anticipates developing processes to make an even narrower gauge string for each of these sports. Zyex strings will one day be available for badminton, starting at 22 gauge, with narrower gauges anticipated in the future." If they do get them thinner, I'll give them a go. Until then, maybe I'll put some in my squash racquet.
The string was the thinnest Zyex I could buy. It measured 1.15mm. I thought, I'd give it a go since I ran out of things to mod. Some people like to go on a badminton court to wave their squash racket about. Now I could go on the badminton court to wave my sqash string about and give them a me-too look. My theory on strings hadn't changed because of this experiment. Though I was initially surprised that the string didn't stretch at very low tension. But on hindsight, it was rather obvious why that happened. Tension had to be considered in relation to the string thickness. The Tension-Per-String-Unit for the thick string was 18.5lbs / 1.15mm = 16.09. This was sustantially lower than the TPSU of my normal string: 14.75lbs / 0.73mm = 20.21. So, in answer to Neil's question: the thick string was at a lower effective tension. I am not due for trying out the string until Monday. In the mean time I can try some idle speculations on what the string would be good for: 1. Grommetless stringing 2. Changing a head light racket to a head heavy one 3. A string that would last a life time
