Category Archives: String Bed Stiffness
The Consumer and SBS
Sting Bed Stiffness (SBS) could be considered alongside performance cars. In the simplest of terms, a high-performance car requires some understanding of what it is going to do; otherwise, you will end up in the trees or worse!
The same with String Bed Stiffness (SBS). If you don’t know what it is going to do, you may end up in the fence!
Why String Bed Stiffness (SBS) matters.
String bed stiffness is a critical performance metric and therefore deserves more attention than it gets in the discussion(s) of string characteristics.
In this video, which is a little “jumpy” at first, you will see the data we collect for every racquet we do. For this discussion, we concentrate on these data:
- Reference Tension
- RDC string bed stiffness
- Flex Four-string bed stiffness
- Racquet Quest SBS (String Sense) stiffness
- Effective stiffness
- Master Tensometer string bed stiffness (kg/cm^)
Big 10 Tennis Player of the Week.
Jack Anthrop has been playing extraordinary tennis for a long time and was recently named Big 10 Tennis Player of the Week after an impressive outing in Dallas!
The link below will take you to the Ohio State post; however, I want to share some of the things Jack has done to secure the game he has.
Jack uses a Head Speed SMU racquet. The head size is 96 square inches and has a swing weight of 333 kg/cm^. This inertia couples with the overall weight of 352 grams (12.4 oz) to create stability and power.
Jack uses MonoGut ZX Pro natural at a reference tension of 56 pounds and string bed stiffness of 60 pounds. This creates a dynamic stiffness of 393.6 PPI.
Jack has been using Ashaway MonoGut ZX Pro since the age of 9! Yep, that’s right, age 9! MonoGut ZX and ZX Pro material is PEEK, a unique string that offers outstanding comfort, feel, and power with better durability than some other materials.
It is our position that more players of any level should consider MonoGut ZX or ZX Pro (thinner). It really just makes sense…just ask Jack, Big 10 Men’s Tennis Player of the Week!
Let us know if you have questions about Jack’s racquet or string. We have been working with Jack since age 9, and we would like to share what we can to help achieve your tennis goal(s).
Thank you, Head and Ashaway, for your continued support!
mens-tennis-anthrop-earns-big-ten-player-of-the-week
Congratulations, Jack, your new Head Speed SMU’s are on the way.
Head Speed SMU
Head Speed SMU
Play Better Longer
For many years, we have been testing all racquets for string bed stiffness, effective stiffness, flexural stiffness, in-plane stiffness, and about any other stiffness you can imagine.
Throughout this process, we were also testing the strings for power potential, creep, string-on-string friction, and linearity.
Linearity is a significant property of string; however, it does not get the attention we believe it deserves. So, this little post will begin to change that. We will start with some images and explain what we see in them.
String Behavior
Four different string materials are represented here from left to right:
- RPM Blast
- IsoSpeed Polypropylene Composite
- Babolat VS Touch Natrual Gut
- Ashaway MonoGut ZX Polyether ether ketone (PEEK)
The entire chart is important, but the real property we are interested in for this post is “linearity”.
- Linearity is how straight the plot is from the beginning to failure.
- Failure is the vertical line associated with each string material.
A glance will show MonoGut ZX with the longest linear track, however, Babolat VS Touch is the very “straightest”, followed by IsoSpeed and RPM Blast.
OK, but why do we care? We care because when we say a string will play better longer, it is based on the linearity which is the property directly related to consistency.
Better predictability = better performance
Players perceive predictability more than raw stiffness.
A string that ages predictably plays better longer, even if it’s not the softest or most powerful.
That’s it!
Now all we need to do is quantify “better”.
I will leave that up to you.
Racquet Quest, LLC
