To be honest, I bought the Head Sonic Pro string in a bind, and I made the mistake of buying it from a local sports chain. I had already planned to review the Head Sonic Pr0 16 tennis string but I hadn’t ordered at the time, so anyway, I paid way to much for it and I’m a little ashamed that I overpaid.
Head Sonic Pro 16 playtest
Stringing the Sonic Pro was actually pretty easy, it’s a softer tennis string so drawing the mains and weaving the crosses was fast and painless. I strung this in a hurry and was able to tie off my last knot around 15 minutes, start to finish. I pulled tension at 55lbs because it is promoted as a control string, so I went a little looser to get that little bit of extra power I want from a polyester tennis string.
Like many other polyester tennis strings I have played with, it takes a little bit to get the strings to settle in the racquet (or really it takes time for me to get used to the string behavior). My first impression, after they broke in, was kind of in the middle of the road; I liked the Sonic Pro at times but I also wanted to cut them out. It’s a love hate relationship with this string.
On flat, well timed ground strokes, the Head Sonic Pro 16 performed exceptionally well; sending the tennis ball rocketing across the net with insane amounts of pace. However, on a less than perfectly timed shot, the Head Sonic Pro would not pocket the ball at all and the energy I exerted on my swing was completely wasted as it was not translated to the strings. That was the biggest disappointment for me, the complete lack of power from the Head Sonic Pro. Semi good contact often resulted in balls into the net, sometimes right at the bottom. I thought at first it was my stroke, but I picked up a different racquet (with different tennis strings) and everything was peachy.
The string comes as a round, non-textured, monofilament so I did notice a slight lack of spin. Like the power characteristics, off center shots would not give me enough spin to forgive a mishit and roll in the court. I like to hit with a lot of spin (with a western grip), so I had to go extreme with my grip to get more spin from the Sonic Pro string.
The best characteristic of Head’s Sonic Pro was it’s ability to give additional control, directing the ball is really quite enjoyable with this string. I play with an open string pattern tennis racquet, so getting a little control from my strings is impressive. The strings allowed me to practically thread shots down the line or rip them cross court when I needed. Changing directions on groundstrokes were easy as well, even coming from a ball with a lot of weight and pace.
I played the Head Sonic Pro 16 for a total of 5 hours before I had to cut it out, I lost quite a bit of tension. The loss of tension resulted in lots of string movement and lack of control, surprisingly, the strings didn’t break but I noticed deep notches had developed. So I would say that the Sonic Pro 16 could last about 7 hours of heavy hitting.
Final thoughts on Head Sonic Pro 16 strings
Because the Head Sonic Pro 16 lacks power and spin, I’m left with a sore arm. To generate enough power to feel like I’ve hit the ball really hard, I was forced to swing harder than I like to. Even though the Sonic Pro is a soft string, it acts like a stiff string when having to generate power. I should have tried this string on my mains for a hybrid setup….
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