Adding lead to a racquet: where to put it, and what it actually changes
Updated: Sep 7
Adding lead to a racquet is not esoteric. It is the only modification that lets you move a frame's values without changing the frame, and it costs a few grams of material.
You do have to know what you are moving. You are almost never looking for weight: you are looking for a distribution. The same gram, placed in four different spots, produces four effects with nothing in common.
What moves when you add one gram
Three values move at once, and not in the same direction.
Mass goes up by one gram wherever you put it. It is the only one of the three that does not depend on position.
Balance shifts towards wherever you added the material. A gram in the hoop makes the racquet more head-heavy; a gram in the butt makes it more manoeuvrable.
Swingweight depends on the square of the distance. This is the point almost nobody explains, and it is the one that decides everything: the contribution of an added mass equals that mass multiplied by the square of its distance from the axis of rotation, taken by convention at 10 cm from the butt.
In practice, on a 27-inch frame, one added gram:
at the tip (12 o'clock), about 58 cm from the axis, adds around 3.4 kg·cm² of swingweight;
at 3 and 9 o'clock, about 45 cm out, around 2 kg·cm²;
at the throat, about 30 cm out, around 0.9 kg·cm²;
in the handle, about 10 cm out, around 0.1 kg·cm² — which is to say nothing.
Those four figures are calculated, not measured. The only number that counts is the one recorded on your frame, before and after. But the order of magnitude is enough to see why one gram at the tip is worth thirty-four grams in the handle, as far as swingweight is concerned.
The positions, and what each one moves
12 o'clock — the top of the hoop. Maximum leverage. Two grams here transform the racquet: it goes through the ball better, gets deflected less, and becomes distinctly more demanding to set up. This is the position for a player who finds the frame too light *at impact*, not too light in the hand. Handle with care: it is also the position that makes a racquet unplayable fastest.
3 and 9 o'clock — the sides of the hoop. The most useful and least spectacular position. It raises swingweight moderately and, above all, twistweight: the frame's resistance to rotating about its long axis when the ball arrives off-centre. If your balls taken near the frame leave soft and short, this is where to look, not at 12 o'clock.
10 and 2 o'clock. A compromise between the two above. Useful when 3 and 9 is not enough and 12 is already too much.
The throat. Little effect on swingweight, clear effect on balance and mass. This is the discreet position, the one that adds weight without changing how the racquet handles.
The handle and the butt. No useful effect on swingweight, maximum effect on balance. This is the counterweight position: it gives manoeuvrability back to a frame you have just leaded in the hoop, or raises total mass without changing anything else. It also raises recoilweight, and therefore stability at contact.
Recoilweight, the value that gets forgotten
Swingweight describes what the racquet does when you rotate it around your hand. Recoilweight describes what it does when the ball strikes it: how much it recoils and vibrates freely, with a loose grip.
It is calculated like this:
RW = SW − ((Mass / 1000) × (Balance − 10)²)
It rises as soon as you add mass anywhere other than at the balance point, and the further from that point, the more it rises. On a 310 g frame balanced at 32 cm and measured at 320, four grams at twelve o'clock take recoilweight from 170 to 175; the same four grams in the butt take it to 174. In other words, loading the head does not degrade stability at contact — what a counterweight in the handle buys back is manoeuvrability and timing, not impact absorption. That is why the two operations belong together.
How much, and in what order
One rule of method, and it is worth more than any order of magnitude: one change at a time, with two or three sessions between each.
If you put two grams in the hoop and four in the handle on the same day, you will learn nothing about what either did. You will only know that it is "better" or "worse", which is not usable information.
Second rule: symmetry. On the sides, the same mass left and right, at the same height. A two-gram asymmetry is enough to unbalance the hitting plane.
Third rule: start small. One gram is felt. Two grams at 12 o'clock is already a decisive change.
Lead tape or putty: which, and where
Adhesive lead tape goes on in thin strips around the hoop, under the bumper where possible, or over it on the outside. It cuts to the millimetre, weighs easily, and comes off. It is the tool for precise tuning on the hoop. Our Pro Tour lead tape, in 16 g, is made for that.
Tuning putty goes where a strip cannot: inside the handle, through the butt. It packs down, doses precisely, and stays put. It is the counterweight tool. Our black putty, in 24 g, is exactly that.
Two practical precautions. Lead placed on the outside of the hoop gets damaged and peels: cover it, or put it under the bumper. And as with any handling of lead, wash your hands after cutting the tape, and do not leave offcuts lying about.
What lead will not do
It does not change the stiffness of the frame. A soft frame stays soft, a stiff frame stays stiff — RA cannot be tuned.
It does not change the head, the string bed, or what the string does to the ball. If your problem is that the ball drops short when you brush up, look first at the string and the tension.
And it does not rescue a racquet that is not yours. You move values by a few percent, not across whole families. If the gap between what you play and what would suit you is large, no amount of lead will close it. In that case it is the frame that needs revisiting, not the lead: the configurator asks the six questions that decide head size, mass and length together.
The protocol, step by step
Six steps. They take half an hour, and they save you doing the same work three times.
Weigh the racquet strung, as you play it, overgrip and dampener included. Write the figure down.
Record the balance by resting the racquet across a table edge until it holds on its own, then measure from the butt. Write it down.
Decide on one zone and one mass. Cut the strip and weigh it before fitting: a strip of lead cannot be judged by eye.
Fit it symmetrically. On the sides, the same mass at three and nine o'clock, at the same height. Under the bumper if the frame allows it, otherwise outside and covered.
Measure mass and balance again. The difference should match what you fitted; if it does not, something has come loose or you weighed it badly.
Play three sessions, then write it down. One sentence, in terms of behaviour: what changed at the baseline, at the net, on serve, and late in the match.
If the result is bad, take it all off and go back to the starting point. That is why you make one change at a time: it is reversible, and you know exactly what to undo.
Three typical adjustments, and what they move
"It gets pushed back on heavy balls." The problem is usually stability at contact, not total mass. Two grams at three and nine o'clock, plus two grams in the handle so as not to slow the set-up. You raise twistweight and recoilweight without turning the racquet into a hammer.
"It lacks penetration, the ball dies on the bounce." Here it is swingweight. One to two grams at twelve o'clock, and a counterweight in the butt if the racquet becomes too head-heavy for your taste. It is the most effective and the most risky adjustment: beyond two grams you are changing the racquet rather than tuning it.
"It is too head-heavy, I am always late." You do not remove material from the hoop — there is none to remove. You add it in the butt. Four to six grams in the butt — not mid-handle: between the two the difference is twofold — bring the balance down by 0.4 to 0.6 cm, raise total mass, and leave swingweight unchanged to within a point. The racquet becomes more stable and more manoeuvrable at once, which sounds contradictory and is not.
In all three cases, the figures above are starting points, not prescriptions. The only number that counts is the one recorded on your frame.
Doing it yourself, or having it measured
Leading your own racquet is an excellent exercise, provided you accept that you are working blind on swingweight: a kitchen scale gives you mass and a table edge gives you balance, but swingweight, no. The simulator on the Understand page closes part of that blind spot: it computes the shift before you cut a single strip.
That is precisely what a ProSetup tuning does: we measure the three values on your frame, establish what has to move and by how much, add the material, measure again, and hand you the written record, before and after. It is also the matching service, when you play two retail frames that nothing has ever aligned — a Matcheur racquet, by contrast, is set to order to a tenth of a gram, and does not carry that dispersion.
To understand how the three values combine before you start cutting strips, the complete tuning guide takes them one at a time.
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