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Cut the right length, hold the frame without distorting it, pull each string to its value, tie off without losing anything: the four-knot job, move by move, whatever the machine.

"Stable" means two things: not twisting when the ball is hit off-centre, and not being pushed back when it comes in heavy. Two figures measure them.

A used price is not a quote: it is an order of magnitude. Here are the ones for 36 frame families, against the equivalent new price, and what moves them.

A hybrid is not the average of two strings: it gives each direction of the string bed the job it actually does.

A stringing mistake can almost always be fixed, as long as nothing is released in a hurry. Here are the most common ones, sorted by stage of the job.

Balance is given in centimetres from the butt or in points from the middle. Both say the same thing, as long as you know where you count from.

A stringing machine does two things: it pulls a string to a set tension, and it holds the frame without distorting it. Choose it on the second one first.

The ratio between a racquet's gravitational moment and its inertia. The formula, one worked example, what four grams do to it depending on where they go — and the three things it does not say.

Not two qualities, two structures. What each one does to the ball, to the arm and to the life of the string — and why the player who never breaks is often the worst served.

A ball never meets a string at its stringing tension. The model, the equations and the figures: what string-bed deflection adds in kilos, and why a stiff string takes more of it.

The same gram does not do the same thing at 12, at 3 and 9, at the throat or in the handle. What each position changes about mass, balance, swingweight and recoilweight.

A used frame can be an excellent deal or a dead object. What can be checked by eye, what needs measuring, what cannot be repaired, and what to do with it once you own it.

Not a brand, not an adjective: four variables decide — material, gauge, shape, tension. What your current string already tells you, and where to place yourself among the seven numbers.

Stringing, tuning, matching and carbon frame repair at Aube, in the Orne, 7.5 km from L'Aigle. Open seven days a week all year, with the measured values recorded in writing.

The brand decides nothing. Length, mass and swingweight decide everything — and a racquet that is too light teaches a bad stroke. Including where a tuned frame changes nothing.

L0 to L5 assumes a hand shape as much as a hand size. The two measuring methods, their real margin of error, what a grip that is too small costs your elbow, and where the convention stops.

A racquet does not cure a tendinopathy. It can stop feeding it: frame stiffness, string, tension, swingweight and grip size — and the order in which to change things.

Not a brand, not a model: four values decide what you feel at impact — mass, balance, swingweight, stiffness. How to place them from the racquet you already own.

Gear is not the cause of the pain. It can make it easier or harder — shoulder, wrist, forearm, elbow. The levers, in the order they count and what each costs.

A pro stock promises one simple thing: escape the retail frame. The promise is real. What is less real is the condition it arrives in, and the settings it carries — someone else's.