Balance point has nothing to do with Head-Heaviness??? A strange thing is noted today during my search for the 'ideal' racquet. I have had a bad time with AT800 OF - I blame it for being too head-heavy. I was able to try one AT500 from a friend and amazingly I didn't feel any head-heaviness at all! It feels really good! So I was talking to myself yeah this one should be an even-balanced one although all technical details I could find about AT500 said it was also a head-heavy racquet. I was confused so I tried out the good old method of balacing the two racquets on my index finger in parellel, man it confused me even more when I saw that the AT500 and the AT800, were having almost-the-same balance point! (the distance from the bottom of handle to the balance point is about the same!) So - my limited physics knowlege tells me that a head-heavy racquet should have a balance point closer to the head of the racquet, and an even-balanced one should have a balance point closer to the bottom of the racquet - am I right?
Let's say we have a symmetric dumb bell and a uniform rod of the same length and mass. They have the same balance point (the center). But the mass of the dumb bell is concentrated at the ends, whereas the mass of the rod is spread uniformly throughout its length. If you hold each object at one end and try to swing it, you will find the dumb bell more sluggish, because it has a larger moment of inertia. This is an extreme example, of course, but I hope it makes the physics involved clear.
Indeed-- "head heaviness" doesn't imply necessarily a higher balance point, but rather more concentrated weight at the head, as opposed to possibly equal, though more spread out weight, in the handle. Search for "swing weight" on the forums, and you should be able to find topics mentioning it. Swing weight I find is more relevant than so called "even-balanced" or "head heavy" or whatever ratings that Yonex gives, they're notorious for not being able to label things consistently. Swing weight is generally more apparent when you actually swing the racket, for the reasons Cheongsa expplained, as opposed to balancing it; someone could probably give you a better physics lesson on it, but the head weight concentration's further distance from the fulcrum of motion multiplies it's apparent weight. On a more even-balanced racket, the head's weight is more spread out, and thus it's concentration is less far from the fulcrum, and thus, you get less of an apparent weight multiplier.
see www.badmintonforum.com/vb/showthread.php?t=16685 and www.badmintonforum.com/vb/showthread.php?t=20116
The beam of the AT800OF frame is a larger boxed shape compared to the AT500's frame beam, to give it a higher swingweight and hence power. The AT800OF also has a stiffer flex than the AT500. It needs more strength to use the AT800OF than the AT500.
Good one! - solved my problem! Thanks. The weight distribution along the racquet MATTERS! Wonder wether Yonex put some mysterious extra-heavy material right in the tip of the Armortec 800 racquets
