Thx 4 your review dink, and waiting you 2 test Wilson K-Tour/ K-Blaze also Arcsaber 10. I'm sure you'll test Arcsaber 10 and i think your view is objective enough and useful 2 me to find second and third racket.
Hi to all. this is my first post. i live in the philippines and i saw a brand of racket which is relatively cheap. the owner of the store said that one of its models is very much like armortec 700. The brand name is "myton". don't know if you've heard it. maybe it's made in china or anywhere in asia. The price is $95. I've been thinking of buying a new racket. I would like to have a stiff, head heavy, with a very light shaft, and up to 28lbs tension. Which guys do you think is the best buy? By the way, if i can ask here in this thread... what brand has the lightest stiff, head heavy racket? Thanks.
Furbysaur, if your budget is less than 4k, I suggest you look at the RSL Millenium series. The 3200 is widely available and is the best value for money you can get for a racket.
kason carvel Ok so I'm getting the itch to buy another racket, I guess you can never have enough (nine so far!) I got a kason carvel recently going by dinks racket review and I LOVE IT. I developed a really powerful smash with this racket, which I never really had before. It really let me have fun and "play" untill I got the technique right due to the light weight. With my yonex mp99 it was more work than fun. I want something comparable to the carvel, length and flex wise, but with more power. It will very likely have to be heavier because you can only generate so much power with a light racket but now I've developed a decent enough technique to take advantage of it. I've also decided to try out the sotx woven series. So the question is which woven model would be the closest to the carvel. Probably comparing apples and oranges here but I think the most important factors would be shaft length and flex. Any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated. And now off to the review section! On a side note have you still got any of those new rackets you recently acquired dink? John
Haven't tried them yet because they are not readily available in the U.S. I'm working on getting some so stay tuned.
Bolts, you developed a really powerful smash with the Kason Carvel?! If that's the case, then you can smash really powerfully with just about any racket. For me the Carvel was a 77g wet noodle. I couldn't get any power out of it. But it's great got great mobility, decent build quality and great bang for the buck.
Nope ....with my MP99 I couldn't before.... and yes hard as it is to believe a really powerful smash with the kason carvel... ok I'm not a pro but we do get some pretty competitive games going and one of the guys I play with even noticed how much my smash has improved. He uses a AT 700 and can't smash for beans btw!...damn I hope he doesn't read this! lol For the record he does win most of time when we play singles.. there I said it...hehe But yeah back to the point. I really developed good technique with the carvel. I tried my MP99 last week after having put it aside for awhile and my clears were going too far, so it is definitely easier to generate power with the 99. I had a hard time re-adjusting to it actually. The shots are more rewarding when you play with a "real" racket. I think the carvel really helped me get the whipping effect down because it is so light and effortless to use. Surprisingly little vibration considering how light it is too. It's a real gem, especially for the price.($50 on ebay). One other detail... and it could be a biggy. I have really big hands and I had to enlarge the grip on the carvel as it was only available in G5. I glued 3/32" and 1/16" balsa wood to the handle. The different sizes are to keep a closer ratio the the shape. I don't recommend doing this unless you are handy because you can really mess up your racket depending on which glue you use, and balsa also sands down really easily so if you're not careful you can sand it too much before you realize it. So that's another factor, it could very well be the handle size. For the MP99 I used 1/16" only and ratio of the sides was off a bit. I deemed myself qualified since I have a machining and CNC background as well as extensive radio control airplane building! Yes I realize you can just add overgrips and that's what most people will say but when you add too many you lose the shape of the handle and you can't feel the flats anymore and I hate that. Also overgrips weigh more than balsa. It's a pain in the ass to do but if you get it right it's worth it to have the right grip size. bolts
The Carvel is a much lighter, more flexible racket than the MP99 and AT700. Everything else being equal, if you could flex/maximize the MP99/AT700, you're going to smash much harder than the Carvel. Since you are smashing harder with the Carvel, that means you are maximizing it but not the MP99. For me, I can twice probably 30-40% harder with the MP99/AT700 than the Carvel. The Carvel is far too light for me and I over max out the racket's potential. Once you build up and can maximize the MP99, you'll see your smashes will be much harder than with the Carvel. Finally, grip size makes a huge difference too. Getting the right grip is essential for fair comparisons.
Yes that's the key....once I build up and can maximize the MP99. Also I'm starting to think the grip size is more of a factor than the flex or weight of the racket. I need to get the proper size... G3 or even G2, although I've never seen or heard of rackets with a G2 grip being sold, only that sizes exist from G1 to G5. bolts
I've mentioned this to many people (in person who inquire about rackets) but haven't posted it on BC: I've realized, I would play better with any racket that has the proper grip size and good, tight string tension over my favorite racket with the wrong grip size and mediocre string at the wrong tension. Makes you wonder huh?
With that said, I just strung a 93.0g RSL X2 Gold with BG66 at 31lbs. and modified the grip to my liking. I think that'll beat 99% of the rackets out there.
well said, I modified my Woven 16 G5 grip to about between G2/G3, and ! the racket perform just so much better. and ya, i got the grip modified with some carbon fibres.
i thought I was mad when I did my grip with veneer-wood...which took like half an hour.... You carbon-fibered your racket? do tell....
What kind of glue did you use? I first tried it on an old forza racket I had lying around and I used a combination of epoxy and ca glue. Later when I did my real (expensive/new) rackets I just stuck with the ca glue. ca is cyanoacrylate for those who don't know, or crazy glue but crazy glue is too thin so you'd need to get to a hobby store and get medium weight glue. The wood just soaks in the thinner glues. Ca glue is lighter than using epoxy. Did you just wrap around the carbon fibre or did you glue on sheets? Is the shape of the handle still pronounced or did the corners get rounded in the process? bolts
i had some carbon fibre cloth left over from 5 years back when i did some lab test on CF reinforced columns during university days. Basically, the material is a cloth-type woven material, very soft. Nothing like what we see in our rackets. What i actually did was to cut it into strips about an inch wide, length roughly the same as the handle and soak them in superglue(used about 8 tubes in all). then i paste them onto the wood handle. looks messy, but it gets the job done. after drying, just same the surface smooth. quite easy to do, as long as you have the patience.
Victor users and Sir Dink, do you know what happened to the Power Waves series? The official German and English website doesn't list it. It does list the Ripple Power series. Are the Power Waves replaced by the Ripple Powers? A name change? Or are the Power Waves only available in Asia http://www.victorsport.com/product_english.asp?productSort=97 Thanks for the help in advance, Feng
the ripple power series are the exact same rackets as the power waves... They (for reasons unknown to me) have different naming in europe the ripple power 11 is the PW11, the same ~94grams, stiff, headheavy, beast...