What’s new with the Tecnifibre Slash?
Comparing the Tecnifibre Slash to the older Suprem, there’s a few key differences to be aware of:
Shape
The first, and most prominent, is the Slash rackets have a different shape to the older frames. With the previous Suprem, the 125 had a small head, but the 130 and 135 had much larger, wider heads. Owing to their unwieldily shape, they almost felt like a halfway house between squash and tennis rackets.
With the new range, the heads on the 125, 130 and 135 are all uniform in shape. They’re also longer and slimmer than their previous counterparts. This elongated shape, to me, is much nicer than the old shape – a big win for Tecnifibre. They almost feel like ‘hybrid’ rackets, with a stringbed much longer than most ‘traditional’ shaped rackets.
The new 120
The odd-one-out when it comes to shape is the 120. This is a brand new weight for Tecnifibre, with this racket theoretically being the lightest in their entire ‘pro’ line-up.
This racket has a smaller, shorter head size than the other Slash rackets (461cm² vs 485cm²), though is slightly wider. This shape is much more in line with most traditional squash rackets and closely matches the old Suprem 125 shape. The frame of racket itself is also thinner than the rest of the range.
The 120 is Mostafa Asal’s racket of choice. This means it’ll undoubtedly find its way into the hands of most players considering the Tecnifibre Slash range.
Purchase links
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The X-Top
Last season, Tecnifibre removed the bumper strip from the top of their Carboflex rackets. They claimed a more head-light balance, a more aerodynamic shape, and the ability to get closer to the walls.
In its place, they included a new Kevlar fibre section at the top of the racket. This claims to offer the same levels of durability as a bumper strip, while introducing the aforementioned advantages.
This technology has now been adopted across Tecnifibre’s traditional racket shape range, which will likely be welcomed by most players.
However, this new design hasn’t come without controversy – the potential downside is durability, which we’ll come to later.
Tecnifibre squash rackets – The one problem
Close-together weights – theoretically a good thing
Taking a look at the variety of weights across the new range, you’ll see only 5 grams separate each frame. On first impressions, this is brilliant – players should have the ability to choose a racket exactly to their taste.
However, five grams is a relatively small amount of weight. Therefore, factories have ‘manufacturing tolerances’ that allow them to work within a +/-5 gram window.
This means, theoretically, a 120 and 130 gram racket could be identical, and still hit the shelf, no-questions-asked.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with this – it’s common industry practice. Tightening up the tolerances would undoubtedly add time, and therefore cost, to the production process. With racket prices already spiralling over the last few years, I’m sure this is something most players would rather avoid.
Overlap in weights – not ideal
Now, with the batch of Tecnifibre Slash rackets I received, the lightest racket was actually the Slash 130. It weighed less than both the 125 and the 120. Check out the table below for the full breakdown of the ‘actual’ weights (plus some useful ‘similar’ rackets for comparison).
| Racket | Weight in head | Weight in grip | Overall weight | Racket balance* |
| Tecnifibre Slash 120 | 84 | 72 | 156 | 53.8% |
| Tecnifibre Slash 125 | 87 | 71 | 158 | 55.1% |
| Tecnifibre Slash 130 | 82 | 71 | 153 | 53.6% |
| Tecnifibre Slash 135 | 87 | 72 | 159 | 54.7% |
| Dunlop Sonic Core Ultimate 132 | 83 | 71 | 154 | 53.9% |
| Dunlop Sonic Core Elite 135 | 84 | 73 | 156 | 53.8% |
| Head Radical SB120 | 81 | 70 | 153 | 52.9% |
| Head Radical SB135 | 85 | 70 | 157 | 54.1% |
| 305Squash Procell 120 | 81 | 69 | 150 | 54.0% |
As a rule of thumb, rackets with 52.5% or less weight in the head are headlight. Rackets between 52.5%-54% are even, and anything greater than 54% is head heavy.
The numbers in this table are calculated by placing each racket across two scales – one under the head, and one under the grip – and measuring the results.
On one hand, I want to say it’s not that big of a deal. Not many people are ever going to really notice the difference unless they have both rackets in their hand. And even then, the difference a few grams makes is often hard to notice.
And this problem isn’t solely limited to Tecnifibre. Most other brands have fairly similar weightings across their racket range. I think Tecnifibre have made things much more complicated by advertising rackets at just 5 grams apart, when in reality it seems difficult to achieve this.
Then there’s the matter of principle. If you’re paying a premium for the lightest racket, you would hope it weighs less than cheaper models.
I’ve been assured by Tecnifibre that the light 130 I received is a pre-production one-off. They kindly weighed a few of the rackets from their inventory and things did roughly balance out. However, the weights across the full range were much closer than the advertised weights would suggest.
It’s quite tough to write an accurate review article with this in mind. Therefore, the write-up below is a fairly ‘generic’ take on the range as a whole. I’ve applied some rule-of-thumb principles, on the assumption that the majority of rackets should fall within the correct weight banding.