Maurizio from Switzerland asks:
i recently restringed my squash racket, and the guy (restringer) asked me if i want a different tension for vertical and horizontal Strings
1.i know its a usual practice on tennis racquet, but my question is, are this difference also applied on squash racquets?
2.i own an old racquet that i like from the 90’s (prince Extender) and i noticed the head surface (area) is a lot smaller than on my new one. Should i restring it less tighter to achieve the same trampoline effect (power effect)? or the area does not’ affect the trampoline effect?
I have never tried stringing the mains and crosses at different tensions. I suspect that I would not be able to tell the difference.
There is a nice thread here where a few readers discussed this topic in more detail.
My takeaway from reading the thread is it’s fun and worthwhile to experiment with different setups, but probably not a major difference other than affecting the net tension of the string bed somewhat.
As for the second question about the Prince Extender: another good question, and I’m not sure of the answer. My guess is that using a given tension would feel even tighter on the Extender than on a modern frame.
Although I wasn’t able to help Maurizio very much with his questions, I’ll leave the post open for comments below in case anyone wants to chime in – thanks!
Rod says
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I had a friend doing this on his Head Cyano 115 rackets for a while. Ultimately he couldn’t really tell the difference and reverted back to standard tension across crosses and mains.
prim0pyr0 says
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Badminton do crosses tighter, tennis crosses looser, squash crosses looser.
I do crosses 2lb looser, seems to work.
Nick Down says
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It sounds like this stringer is used to stringing Tennis Racquets with a hybrid set up, i.e different strings in the mains and crosses, that’s common in Tennis and often requires a variation in Tension to protect the frame from distortion due to a variation in the elasticity of the string types. However, it’s unusual to the point of being almost unheard of in squash stringing. EG with a prince aistick, the mains are a lot longer than the crosses, especially at the throat. There are 16 mains on most Prince powering models, which is more than most racquets, but even so, when the crosses are in the racquets often feel loose in the machine, usually meaning that the racquet head has stretched slightly. That is caused by the crosses squeezing the sides of the frame inwards, which in my experience, can happen with a lot of teardrop shaped, closed-throat racquets, even by dropping the cross string tension considerably. So increasing the cross string tension will make it even worse. I would try and avoid that if possible. I’ve experimented with quite a variation eg 30lbs mains 20lbs crosses and it still happens, so that’s not the answer, Some squash rackets, I guess, are just like that.
Regarding the 2nd point, the newer racquet with a much larger head will have longer strings, so theoretically you’ll need to string it tighter to get the stringbed stiffness(SBS) similar to the old extender. However, the string pattern density will also effect the SBS. The two racquets are not going to be similar in many aspects too, if you want racquets to perform similarly, it’s better to have two or more the same and then find a ‘qualified’ stringer who can customise the raquets to remove the manufacturing tolerances and exactly match the swingweight, overall weight and balance point.
Ahmed says
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Regarding your Prince experience, they are different! There are long mains but UNLIKE all other racquets, they are not on the same plane. So, when you add the crosses to make the weave, they move the mains excessively compared to any other racquet. You are basically moving the mains from 2 different plains to one. This increases the tension of the mains way more than any other models. I personally believe that with prince, you should string the mains 1 or 2 lbs loser than the crosses to keep the tension constant across the whole frame.