i'm looking to pick up a new racquet/pair of racquets and am mostly interested in the armortec 900 T. been reading a few threads on the issue with counterfeit racquets on the market and would like to know what the main similarities/differences are since people don't seem to be able to tell what they have bought? i've been out of the badminton game for quite some time but used to play competitive 5 yrs back with the ti-10 and consider myself a decent player. so, is it just the paint that is similar between fake and real or do the fake ones have more going for them? also if anyone knows where to get hold of racquets in Australia (perth) i'd appreciate some tips! cheers
The only thing fakes have to a real one is the paint job. I would never get a fake yonex racket. A fake cannot hold high tension and will more likely break.
generally the fakes use different materials and so i would suspect the consistency between racquets of the same model. also, most of the i've used appear not to be as stiff as the originals they're trying to mimic.
Some fakes hold up to stringing quite well. I recently strung up a Nanospeed 1000 three times to see how it would hold up and how it would play. I reused Microlegend XL for the mains and Progut 66 for the crosses. The ML XL was strung at 28 for 2 months, the PG66 at 30 for 2 weeks so they're adequately stretched. After trying success at 28 to 30 lbs with other string I did a final 34/38 TPTD. On the last test, I set the tension for the last cross before tie-off up to 40lbs (machine max). I was expecting the racket to break but it didn't. I thought it would play poorly but it actually feels a lot better than with the < 20lbs stock fake BG-65 string.
