Product Review
Gosen Roots Aermet
by David Chiu ( April 2001 )
 
Gosen is probably one of the oldest badminton string manufacturer in world. Gosen brand badminton string is very well known in Asia… more than Yonex. Legendary badminton players such as Susi Susanti and Alan Budi Kusuma used Gosen badminton strings on their racquet. In contrary to the Asian market, here in the United States, Yonex is the king of badminton racquet and string. This, however, might change very soon. With the explosion of new badminton brands entering the U.S. market, Yonex will have a tough time selling their products due to the high price and limited market distribution. Gosen will probably take the badminton string market in 2-3 years because of their experience in manufacturing high performance racquet string if they are aggressive enough.

Gosen has large selections of badminton strings. Many of them are excellent strings. In the U.S., Gosen only distributes 9 of them. In this review, we will look at Gosen latest top-of-the-line badminton string, the Roots Aermet (BS-310).

Below are statements from Gosen claims about Aermet:
Aermet is a super alloy having twice the strength and tenacity of Titanium. It is a material applied on fighter plane such as the "Eagle" and Formula One (F-1) type racing cars. Aermet is super allow which provides amazing high resilience.

With all the claims mentioned above, our team was very curious if these claims were true. We tested the strings on Yang-Yang Tactic 9000 (3U-G2), our standard testing racquet which is also our best selling racquet, and Yang-Yang Excel 2800 (2U-G2), a new prototype racquet designed for offensive players. The strings are strung at 22 lbs based on the 2 strings method using Alpha Axis Pro stringing machine. Braid is installed on the second cross string from the top for each racquet to prevent our testers from breaking the string too early.

First Impression:
After we played with the strings for couple of hours in drills and games, we believe that Gosen is not far behind from its claims about Aermet. We got a lot of power from this string. The Roots Aermet BS-310 is a lot more resilience than any of Yonex Titanium strings. The resilience is very close to Yonex BG-85. This is very surprising since the string rated at 21 gauge or 0.70mm which is the thickness of Yonex BG-65 and BG-70-Pro. We were hoping (or you can called it dreaming) that it will be as resilience as the Gosen Tec-Gut-Tour, an excellent string with high resiliency and lots of power. As for sound for those who want it really bad, the string makes a loud pop sound when we hit the shuttlecock. (We use Tronex Gold feather shuttlecocks graded for international tournament match to make sure that the tests are valid.). The sound gives a good feeling of power. However, we did not get that soft feeling that Yonex BG-85 offers when we do a drop shot. This is a trade-off because the Gosen Aermet offers better controls and durability than Yonex BG-85. It's like a competition of materials between Yonex Vectran, material for manufacturing the Yonex BG-80 and BG-85, and Gosen Aermet, material for manufacturing the Gosen Roots Aermet BS-310.

Good:
The Roots Aermet gives player a lot of power and excellent precise control due to its resilient nature of the Aermet material. The feeling of power and control is far better than the Yonex BG-68Ti. Likewise, we believe the Aermet is more durable than the Yonex BG-68Ti, BG-80, or the BG-85 because of the thickness and the strength of Aermet. However, we cannot confirm this because none of the testers broke any of their string on the their racquets.

Bad:
It takes time to get used to drop using Roots Aermet because it's hard to feel the impact of the shuttlecock. The Roots Aermet does not have the soft feeling that Yonex BG-85 has. This is probably also due to the resilient nature of Aermet which makes the Roots Aermet very powerful and precise on control.

Conclusion:
Gosen offers a breakthrough with Roots Aermet. We were surprised by the performance of the Roots Aermet. We thought this string will be another string full of hype like the Yonex BG-65Ti and BG-68Ti. We were wrong. Gosen claims were correct. It's good to have another excellent performance string in the market. As you all might have guess, we give the Roots 5 out of 5 © rating.

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