I now play mostly with seniors/ladies in a social badminton club...so using an older racket wouldn't be too bad. I also use them when I'm assisting a coach with some pre-teens...when I'm not using the Carlton I'll be using a Yonex B-8000 from the same era. 18lbs tension is quite alright for a vintage 3.7x though I believe in their heyday they would have been strung up to about 21/22 lbs. That would have been the highest tension put on any racket of that time. I think I've mentioned in an earlier part of this thread that with the higher tension the grommets would wear out quickly and re-stringers of that day would generally replace the grommets every time the Carltons get re-strung. In this day and age with the one-piece composite frames and hi-tech manufacturing/materials there's really no need for grommets...just another precaution really, as the holes could be moulded with smooth rounded edges...so no cutting of the strings would happen. Rgds.
Oh...and thanks for the pics. I can see that it's a later production model of the 3.7X. Both of mine are the ealier 1st generation ones, a simple rounded T-joint in black, with the old '3-shuttles' logo printed on it. I think I may have posted pics of my 3.7 in an earlier part of the thread.
