Category Archives: Good News!
Something New!
Effective August 1, 2025, the World Headquarters of Racquet Quest, LLC will have new hours!
Yeah!
The hours that are changing are those on Wednesday only…
Wednesday: 9:00 AM until 1:00 PM
This time will allow us to work on our website, podcasts, and YouTube Channel, which have been left out for a while.
If you have questions during this “time out,” please text 407.491.4755
Thank you!
NG Strings – Part Two: Natural Gut Knot Strength
Any string that goes into a tennis racquet is, at some point, going to be tied off using a knot. Creating a string knot is normally not an issue, however, some strings are more sensitive to this process than others.
This plot will show the relative difference between gauges, and other properties. We can see that NG17 gauge did not quite make it to the stress/strain ceiling of 50 pounds. That is why there is only a single line while the other two (2) go through the cycle before the knot fails.
This is a tough test for natural gut due to the coefficient of friction (COF) being pretty high meaning the overlapping strings are like sawing at each other as the knot is being pulled tight. The knot strengths in the 60 pound range are suitable and will not, typically, be a problem. Be very careful with values less than that, however.
Natural Gut Knot Strength
And, while we are talking about knots, we need to consider the best practices for tying off other strings on natural gut. The best practice is don’t! Find a grommet that can be suitable for tying off another material type on itself…not the natural gut. Obviously if the entire string bed is natural gut it is a good idea to find a suitable tie off on a cross string.
There are other considerations when typing off on natural gut and we will have look at these in a future post.
The power potential of the NG Strings has beed added to the String Power Potential page and can be seen here.
Just type in NG Strings in the search field if you don’t feel like scrolling!
NG Strings
Several months ago we tested some small samples of NG natural gut string. The results were not exciting so the data was not published.
Recently we tested some new versions of NG Strings, the PROV5+, and have some results to post.
First, the packaging is top notch.
Second, the two (2) 12m lengths per set is perfect, in our opinion, since all racquets should be strung using two (2) pieces of string, no one piece or ATW. There may be a manufacturing component to the 2 piece decision, also.
The “squiggles” we see in the two (2) NG Strings may be the tiny changes in the bonding agent(s) that occurs under load. We have seen this in some early Luxilon gut. We refer to it as a “break-in period”. Pre-stretching the entire piece length will reduce the break-in period.
Third, the gauge is much more consistent than previous samples.
This initial post will include stress/strain and ultimate tensile strength plots compared to Babolat VS Touch 17, our most used natural gut.
The first plot is UTS:
Natural Gut UTS
This visual tells the story but if you want the numbers they are at the failure end of each string. The stress/strain cycle shows the relative “softness” of each string. The higher the deflection the softer the string, so NG16 is the stiffest of the three and NG 17 is the softest.
We will be adding Knot Strength so check back soon the see how each string reacts to knots!
We will do several other tests before the string goes into a racquet for player feedback.
In summary this version shows tremendous improvement over the first version we tested… give it a try.
Tennis and Tariffs
If we thought tennis would sneak under the “tariff” radar we were wrong, wrong, wrong!
Every new new racquet we receive has a new line item on the Invoice. That line item is “Tariff”
However, there is a really good way to skip the tariff and still get a fanastic tennis racquet. As a “technical” shop, Racquet Quest, LLC has the advantage of recognizing extraordinary tennis racquets and having them in stock. While others may think this is not a good business model, we think othewise!
The Head Prestige, for example is well represented with our new Prestige SMU in an 18 x 19 string pattern that we believe is going to be experiencing a surge in popularity. We may discuss our belief in a future post.
Head Prestige SMU. 407.491.4755
This is a quick, and small, portion of the Head Prestige SMU. We call these “Special Make Up”
racquets, meaning they will need to be specially made for you! Some would call them “Pro Stock” but whatever you call them they are very special.
These racquets are
uncut”meaning we can create a tennis racquet that is 28 inches long, however, we do not recommend that length for most players, although we have made several.
If you wold like to have more information just send us a text.
Racquet Quest, LLC
