Does anyone know of anywhere that will allow you to build and customise your own racket to your exact specification? Does anyone think it would be a good idea to build your own racket to your exact spec?
Not unless you're willing to order a minimum of 100 pcs. Plus it's not as easy as you think - you can't just say "right, I want the shaft from the AT900, the frame from the Arc-Z, and the same weight/balance as the AT700". Those might all be great features of their respective rackets, but put them all together in the same racket, and it could be a disaster. As Dinkalot will tell you, it's all about synergy.
Yeah I agree regarding putting different aspects of different racket together. I was thinking more along the lines of choosing the weight of your racket, the balance, stiffness etc then getting it "made for you". Surely that would be the ideal way of customising your own racket?
If you buy a hundred I'm sure they'll do it for you . It is not cost effective to do just the one ... besides isn't pretty much every combo imaginable covered by all the different brands and models? You just have to find out which one ... and as has been mentioned above the Panda Power ones alow you to pick from different weights and balance points and with the different models different degrees of stiffness are available as well to the gram and mm ...
what exactly are you looking for ? I am pretty sure we could help out and recommend something that is close to you prefered characteristics.
Sotx weighs and measures the BP of there rackets as well if I remembered correctly. Just curious who would u contact to make custom rackets anyways? Google seach doesn't come up with much.
No need ... Somehow I often think of Kason instead (must be from the time things were Kason sponsored around here)
The problem is that all manufacturers are set up to do production, not custom. The Quality Control on them is also not as good as you might think (hence the "U" rating tolerance). While your average racket might only cost USD25 to make, it's completely reliant on making 100's of the same racket in the one go for these large manufacturers to make a profit. The other issue is, is that say you had a facility to make custom rackets at the same quality as say aerospace or high end bicycles.....would you be prepared to pay USD500 for a racket?
Depends on the racket But high end bicycles also have there weight problems, why do you think most manufractures don't put the total weight of there bikes on there website? Some only put the frame weight because most of the components and the bike quality control limit the accuracy of the weight. I also think that a highend bicycle has some similarities as a high end badminton racket. There is weight difference between 2 models of the same bike. e.g I have 2 Giant NRS Composites with the same component setup and one weighed 24lbs and the other about 23lbs.
See: "The problem is that all manufacturers are set up to do production, not custom. The Quality Control on them is also not as good as you might think (hence the "U" rating tolerance). While your average racket might only cost USD25 to make, it's completely reliant on making 100's of the same racket in the one go for these large manufacturers to make a profit."
There are lots of different specs throughout the various manufacturers but nowhere that allows you to completely customise every aspect of your racket. Take cosmetics for example; wouldn't it be good to have the specs and cosmetics designed by yourself so you had a completely unique racket built to suit your own game?? Surely plenty of people would pay that little (or quite a lot) more for this sort of service?
If you look at the major golf manufacturers they are all into customisation. Someone buying a new set of clubs would never buy off the shelf they would buy something completely fitted to their own game and to the styles they like: http://www.taylormadegolf.com/lower...itting/customfittingoptions.html?IsPopUp=0#70 Lots of other sports (biking, tennis to some extent) offer these options so surely it would be worth badminton going down this route?? I would definitely pay that little bit more for my own customised racket!!
You should ask yourself why it's not around in a sport like tennis already with that much more money flowing around ... (unlike bikes and golfclubs a racket is a one piece shaft and "club" that you can't pick up of the shelf and "customize" by putting the different parts together). Although I am reading something about Bosworth tennis, seem to remember seeing those before ... And Vantage custom but it's the same principle as Taylor Made ... let's call it semi-custom . Not much different from just producing all combo's and give them model names.
Nuances, nuances ... I guess if you can prototype a given frame with different shafts like in the Panda Power Revelation testing process it's not a big step to commercialize it(?). Should be interesting enough to compare with the Bosworth process ...
