Can the
Wise 2086 Tension Head be improved?
This
question did go through my mind for a while. I bought the Wise 2 years ago
as an upgrade for my Arfaian 6200 (Eagnas) stringing machine. The reason, I
wanted to string faster and more conveniently. If I knew then what I know
now, I would have invested more money in a stringing machine at first.
Anyway, after some investigation I decided to upgrade that machine with the
Wise. However, until today I have no clue why this nice tension head is only
available as an upgrade for lock out machines. It is so easy to make a
universal upgrade for dropweight machines. I believe there are a lot of
people out there that would be interested to upgrade their dropweight
machines. Hopefully Herb (of tennishead.com) will read this too some day.
I had to modify the mounting system to fit the Wise on my dropweight
machine and this functioned fine for the last two years.
While
reading evaluations from users and the USRSA, combined with my own
experiences over time, I got ideas to modify my machine a bit to see whether
I could improve the functionality.
When I
bought the Wise, I also purchased the foot pedal which is an option. For
me, the problem with the foot pedal was that I always was searching for it
when I wanted to use it.
I also read
that a shortcoming of the Wise is the lack of a Diablo or nosecone. In the
early days, the gripper damaged the strings quite badly. I was able to
solve this by replacing the original adjustment screw which is located
behind the gripper by a longer one. This however was not easy because it is
almost impossible to find imperial screws in Europe. So, I bought one
during a visit to Canada. I also bought some screws for future projects
while I was there.
So, one of
my wishes was a Diablo, the other wish was a better placed tension (de)activating
button. As an example, I took a closer look at the Babolat machines.
I also
wanted to be able to bring everything back to its
original state at any time.
So I went
to the do-it-yourself store and bought an aluminium strip to bend a holder
to mount the switch, a piece of steel for the Diablo arm, a ceramic drawer
knob to function as a Diablo and some washers to line up the Diablo. Found a
switch, a piece of cable and a mono mini headphone jack in an electronics
store. The switch is connected to the foot pedal inlet on the back as can be
seen in the picture. First tests look promising. Before I make any
conclusions I want to use my new configuration for a while.
Is the Wise
perfect now? No, there are still things that I would like to see improved,
like the noise of the engine and the beeper and the lack of 360 degrees
movement of the racquet.
On the
other hand I still believe it is a great investment for many stringers out
there who want to upgrade their hand-operated machine to electronic linear
pull.
Leon Rosier
[ Up ] [ Leon Rosier Wise Upgrade Notes ] [ Rich Scotto Wise Upgrade Notes ]
