Some of my Preferred Strings so far...

It has been slightly more than two months of strings and rackets testing. So far, I feel there are some string combinations that I am beginning to like. But all of them still need some tweaking in tension.

Up till this point, the most significant and startling "discovery" to me is how much the strings' tension holding is affected by the stringing speed and method. In the past, I have always asked for between 65-70 lbs because I knew there would be a very significant drop in tension somewhere after about 30-60 minutes of play. Because of this, tennis became a time-consuming and expensive hobby. That was one reason why I dropped tennis.

Whenever I had friendly matches or games, I would always string at least two rackets to last me the session. The clearest indicator of tension loss to me was inaccurate serves and hitting the ball long. Once that happens, I would swap rackets.

Now, with experimentation, I know how to string up my rackets to minimise tension loss. My tennis buddies and myself are all surprised on how well the stringbed feels even after 10+ hours of hard hitting! Of course, we are now much older and perhaps weaker compared to almost two decades ago. But still, when we compared our stringing to commercial stringers, the difference felt obvious to us.

Till now, some of the string combinations I like are:

Multifilament fullbed (link)
- tension holding is amazing even after 4+ hours of hard hitting and 2+ weeks after stringing
- the 18x20 stringbed adds a lot to the strings' durability as the ball impact is spread over more strings
- control remains very impressive, so much so that I think I can drop tension some more!

Kevlar / Synthetic Gut hybrid (with skipped outer mains and outer crosses) (link)
- the spin potential from these strings are among the best I have ever used (loses slightly to shaped poly)
- tension holding is the best so far as kevlar does not stretch at all!
- the synthetic gut adds a lot of power and soft feel to the stiff and powerless kevlar
- this combo is holding up extremely well even after 8+ hours of play and 3+ weeks after stringing

Synthetic Gut fullbed (link)
- my fear about a trampoline at such low tension were completely unfounded
- tension holding is very good after 8+ hours of very hard hits and 4+ weeks after stringing

I am enjoying these setups enough not to cut them yet. I want to know how would these strings wear and if the tension loss would increase over time or stabilise. Unless I can find where my other rackets were stored, I'm running out of familiar rackets to test strings!!!