As many of my regular customers will know, I have held my prices at the same level for a very long time and I am always very competitive with my prices compared to local alternatives. However the string manufacturers/retailers have recently increased their string prices to a point where I have little choice but to make small increases in my prices too. For many years I have used a basic rule of thumb of a stringing fee of £12 plus the cost I pay for strings, grips, grommet strips etc. I have seen that in fact I am way below the normal prices of my competition. For example if you come to me supplying your own string I charge that £12 fee but if you were to look at the website for a well-known local Haywards Heath sports shop (I probably shouldn’t name them but look at this link https://gameforlife.co.uk/products/ownstringrestring?_pos=1&_sid=905b2c709&_ss=r) you will see that they charge £16 (so £4 more than me) if you supply your own string and of course the actual total you pay if they supply the string and string your racquet is an even greater difference than that as they will also want to make a profit on the string sale too. So I feel that my basic stringing fee should rise to £13 (still £3 cheaper than the sports shop!) and some of the individual string prices/grip prices will sadly have to rise (not by very much!) in line with the increased costs I have to pay for those but you can be sure that my prices will remain below those of my competitors. In order to be fair to those who have already advised me of their immediate stringing requirements I shall not increase my fees until 11/8/25. I would also reiterate, as it is worth mentioning, that I am an experienced UKRSA qualified stringer (I have been stringing for more than 14 years now and with 40+ years of badminton playing experience) using an electronic stringing machine and I endeavor to turn around racquets within 3 days wherever possible. Some of my competitors (the one in that link) take between one and two weeks! I hope that you will forgive me for making these tiny price increases and please know that I am truly grateful for the loyalty of you, my valued customers.

I am always interested to know whether people have tried some of the lesser known string brands. I came across some interesting reviews of Isospeed tennis string and wondered whether any one here has ever used them or would be interested in trying them?

I haven't done any blog entries for a little while. Now we are well into the spring I'm starting to get a few customers bring me tennis racquets for a change (I don't usually see too many tennis racquets.  As most of you know I mainly specialise in badminton and squash). I would like to remind my tennis players that I do have some strings that they may not have tried which are highly rated such as the MSV strings and I'm not sure why people are not willing to give them a try.  One string that I do not currently stock but have read some very good reports about is the Solinco Mach10 string. Solinco is a brand that many players may not be too familiar with but it is highly regarded and there are some professionals that use it. In fact the Mach10 is Solinco's top of the range string and it is a very new string in their range and there are already professionals that are giving it a try and getting very positive results. If anyone is interested in trying this string then please let me know and I shall order some in. As I'm sure you appreciate it is not economically viable for me to stock lots of strings without knowing whether anyone will order them (unfortunately I have done this with my badminton range of strings to my cost) as I don't want to be left with unused stock. I'm always happy to order in stock if someone wants to try a new string for the first time. Of course Mach10 is not the only Solinco string worth giving a try as their Hyper-G string is also to be highly recommended. I do hope that some of you will want to give Solinco and MSV strings a try. And remember: your racquet is only as good as your last restring! Hope to see some more of my tennis playing customers very soon!

Further to my previous post regarding lesser known badminton string brands, I am trying to see if I can get an arrangement with Abroz as they have two badminton strings that I think are quite interesting. The main one I think would be the Abroz DG67 Power string which I have heard great things about and apparently in testing it performs exceptionally well even when compared to top strings like Li-Ning No1 and Yonex Aerobite and the test results seem to be very good for power, durability, hitting sound and control which is quite amazing for what is almost an unknown string manufacturer here. If I can get a deal with Abroz (they sounded interested) it would be good. So far they have let me purchase a few sets of string at a discount to offset the cost of postage from Malaysia. So although the postal charges mean they wouldn’t be any cheaper overall from other strings, my customers would get the opportunity to try a string that pretty much nobody else here has access to. A restring in Abroz DG68 Pro (dark grey colour) is going to be £18 (so the same price as my most popular strings like Yonex BG65Ti and Ashaway Zymax 68TX) and in Abroz DG 67 power (yellow) £17 (so even cheaper!). I only have 5 sets of each string so it’s a case of first come first served until stocks last.