Here’s a video review I recently did for Stellar’s “The Boss”. Thanks to Stellar for providing this racket to review.
Here’s a transcript of the video (thanks, YouTube auto-captions):
What’s up guys it’s Pierre and in this video I’m going to review this racket. It’s the Stellar — whoops — Stellar “The Boss. That’s the name of this racquet. It’s a teardrop racket.
It’s being used by Joe Lee on the PSA World tour. He’s … Joe Lee from England. This is kind of their, as far as I can make out, flagship teardrop model.
Stellar if you remember from my last couple of videos, they’ve sent me this racket to review, and they are rejuvenating a brand that’s been around since at least the 70s. Geoff Hunt and other famous players from that era used to use this brand back when it was wooden rackets probably but they are remaking the brand for the current era.
So this is a 14 by 18 stringing pattern in a teardrop head shape. Traditional stringing pattern: straight up and down strings. On my balance beam this was 36 centimeters that’s pretty head light and it feels that way. It feels very maneuverable.
This is listed as a 130 gram model and as usual that doesn’t include like grip and strings and everything. On my scale, all in, for comparison with other rackets on my channel: 147 grams. That is a pretty light number and it feels that way: very light, easy to maneuver, feels very nice in the hand.
The cosmetics on this are nice and simple. You got kind of a metallic blue color with some white stripes and a few different bits of lettering on the frame. All in all just a nice uh a nice simple design.
The butt of this racket has the Stellar logo which is difficult to tell “up” from “down” on so they have included on the frame “you” and “me” so that when you spin it, it just tells you “you” or “me”. Now that’s kind of cute but actually it’s kind of annoying because you have to explain it to your opponent. You have to be like: “I’m going to spin and you don’t get to decide, my racket is going to decide who gets to serve first.” It violates the very principle of the spin, which is a shared responsibility. So I think next time they should change that from “you” and “me” to “up” and “down” and then we are back where we should be on the spin. VERY IMPORTANT DETAIL.
The grip on this racket is nice and cushy. It feels nice. The um the grip itself is 10 and a half centimeters around. It feels … normal in my hand. I’m not sure how that compares. I’m trying to get better at telling you how big the grip is. It’s about 10 and a half centimeters and it’s got this … what I see as kind of an oval … an oval shape. The shaft tapers very smoothly from the grip onto the throat of the racket which is nice. If you need to choke up in the corner, there’s no drop off, you can really choke up as far as you want and it kind of continues to feel like one continuous racket.
When I saw this, when I pulled this out of the plastic, I thought, I wonder if this kind of … it’s got kind of a chunky looking frame through the throat here. I wondered if it would feel bulky in any way. It does not, it feels very light. It’s very smooth through the air.
My opinion is that this is an excellent racket. I could definitely play with this racquet full time. It is kind of a standard classic teardrop shape with a nice light balance.
If I had to pick between this teardrop, The Boss, and the Assault, the traditional head shape one that Nele Gilis uses, I probably would pick The Boss because mostly just because at this point I’m used to playing with teardrops and this one just feels really nice. (The Assault was also a very playable racket.)
Make sure you subscribe if you want to keep seeing some videos. Next up I’m going to probably review the Stellar shoes which are called Redback which um which is apparently the name of a spider in Australia. I only tried these out today for the first time because I have been injured.
I slammed my toe into something very solid five weeks ago and I am still in pain and not really able to play squash. I tested this out somewhat before the injury and I’ve kind of played a few times since then so I’ve got the hang of that. The shoes, we will see. I’m going to try and put them through their paces so that’s probably going to be the next video.
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