Babolat racquets & premature natural gut breaks

I’ve had some issues recently with natural gut breaking prematurely on Babolat racquets, in particular, Pure Drives. This seems to be consistently happening at the 5-6 head and/or throat areas. Recently I did a Babolat Overdrive 110 with Tonic+ Longevity 1.35. One week later, the string broke before the player ever hit a ball with [see more]

Old issue – new tactic….natural gut breakage

We’ve been talking about this for quite some time and James Elkovitch recently submitted an article to the USRSA explaining his solution for reducing the likelihood of this happening. We can’t prevent mis-hits but as technicians James offered an interesting idea using Babolat frames as an example. John Gugel responded indicating that the breaks might [see more]

Experiment – New Babolat Pure Aero

One of the things we make an effort to do for the Alliance group is provide interesting and factual information to help racquet technicians in their daily activities. We address the questions that never seem to get answered or, if they do get answered, there’s such a plethora of responses that no one really knows [see more]

Stringing Cost Calculator Idea

As string material and brands options increase at an alarming rate it may be time to discover how to charge for your stringing service and expertise. Typically it has been two (2) times the cost of the string plus your desired hourly rate.  Sometimes your charges are based on the local competition.  Of course, you know the [see more]

Babolat Pure Aero – cross installation on 2-piece

For those of you seeing the new Pure Aero for the first time be aware of the procedure for 2-piece stringing. The frame has a unique grommet system that dictates that you place the tie-off knot on a 2-piece application on the side clearly marked “Short Side” and tie off at 5H. If this is [see more]

Gugel Tools “Gugel Tube”

I’ve posted about this before but I think it’s important to point this out once again. Functional and with purpose, the Gugel Tube is a handy little accessory that eliminates a commonly debated issue where starting clamps are discussed. A popular argument is that the starting clamp places an inordinate amount of stress and pressure [see more]

Cross-overs – good or bad?

Some of you haven’t been in the stringing business long enough to remember the days when most racquets were made of wood, had the same head size and the stringing patterns were very similar. There were no grommet channels running up the side of the frame (see photo left) or at the top because, oh [see more]

Let There be Light!

Stringing black string in a racquet with black grommets can sometimes be a little problem, depending on the age of your eyes! My eyes are pretty good but sometimes they need a little help.  So, several months ago I installed these inexpensive battery powered “stick-on” lights on the Baiardo.   In case your lights go [see more]

Poly & Juniors

I’d like to address an ongoing issue that many inexperienced stringers struggle with and that’s the issue of the wrong application when it comes to stiff poly strings. I recently listened to an audio post by John Gugel regarding this subject and it was very timely because I’ve had two new clients recently, one who’s [see more]

Starting method without using starting clamp

This is a nice little video done by John Gugel on a variation of the starting procedure for stringing a racquet. While many are using the “Yusuki Method” created by Toru Yusuki of Japan, the Yusuki method uses a starting clamp on the outside of the frame. This method simply shows another way of starting [see more]