How do you do it? I just stood 5m away and pulled a bit on both ends, until it felt less elastic. Held it for a few seconds and repeat a few times. Does this seem right? It only stretched a few inches and went back I think. Is this as well as or instead of machine prestretch? Cheers. Will get it done tomorrow and test on Monday.
Pretty much it, mate - pull it until it becomes perfectly elastic. I use them both - hand prestretch makes the string behave itself better.
With VS850 looped around a smooth stair case spindle and looped both ends around a smooth wooden ladle. Then pulled slowly on it until it felt like there was almost no more give. By then I got an extra 8-10 inches of string.
Lol... I did get 12 inches once with a lot of effort, but felt the playability suffered a bit due to permanent loss of elasticity.
is it worth doing this for all strings? with the machine prestretch in very happy with the results so far.
I've found the machine prestretch to be good for pretty much every string. Maybe you could do a manual prestretch for the VS850, but machine prestretch does the job ok.
I've always manually prestretched my strings until there was very little give anymore, but I found that it gave less playability when I stretched it too much. Now I still pretretch by hand, but loop the other end around a heavy fishing scale and stretch to ~10% higher than my desired tension and hold for 10 seconds or so. What do you guys think of the above method versus blind prestretching?
^ VS850 playability suffered for me too when stretched to max at 12 inches. That's why after that time I only do it for 8-9 inches. For other strings, you'll have to experiment a bit to find out where the elastic limit is exceeded.
I use a starting clamp to hold the ends of the string and pull just enough to get rid of the coil memory, then let the machine pre-stretch do the rest.
^I would do that, but I'd have to upgrade my PPSE with a Wise 2086 first, however the girlfriend won't hear it =P