HI complete novice here so just wondering: 1) has anyone made a stick head with this pattern of stringing previously? 2) if not, any thoughts how it would perform?
You mean stringbed is turned by 45 degrees? If we leave aside the engineers, who calculated and designed the racquet in normal way, grommets and string wear, you can string a racquet at much lower tension in such way. No idea how it affects slicing and spinning the netshot
It has definitely been done with tennis, but I can't really see the advantage myself - we'd still have short mains near the frame and breakage hotspots (which would be at 1:30, 4:30, 7:30 and 10:30, as opposed to 12, 3, 6 and 9 on a normal racket). Would be an interesting experiment, though - I hope somebody tries it.
Yeah exactly the head rotated 45 degrees (with 'redirected' grommets of course otherwise there'd be unnecessary tension on grommet points), rather than perpendicular - my bad. I wondered, if the fact a straight overhead shot in the middle of the sweetspot would mean shuttle making contact not just mainly dependent on cross strings but actually a whole lot of strings, would make a difference.
Actually, thinking on the tilted pattern, the strings that lie on the sweetspot would all be equal in length and would be almost as long as the longest main in a normal racket. I'm sure that removing the constraint of having short strings (the crosses) on the sweetspot would increase the bed deflection...
I think the overall sweet spot is still going to remain relatively the same. In fact with that pattern I think you may actually get a smaller playable string bed area. Regardless, Its highly unlikely this will ever become reality. It will cost too much to make a machine to string just these types of rackets and that is if the frame can even withstand the tension on it. I think with a pattern rotated 45 degrees to what we currently use there would be a lot more pressure on the frame pulling it severely out of shape. The shape of the frame would have to change in order for a racket to withstand reasonable playing tension. This might work if the head was a circle rather than oval. I dont think this could increase playability much if at all. Most shots are not ever hit "square" to a shuttle, so the striking angle of the strings to the shuttle wouldnt make any change.
Very good point. Most shots result in contact being at a non-perpendicular angle to the string anyway, except maybe a very perpendicular clear, and even then it would be an unusual set of circumstances for that to be played in a pro game.
Damn skippy it would - the current iso frame was obviously designed for normal stringing. A 45 degree pattern would put compressive force right on the "corners" of the frame, and any engineer will tell you that corners are the weakest points of a body...
