Well, first off I don't consider myself an expert by any stretch, but I have been fooling around with strings and different materials for several years, and I'll be happy to give my opinion.

When you talk with folks, you will get a LOT of opinions on the high performance materials. They are generally referred to as "Fast Flight", but cover lots of different ones--Fast Flight, Dynaflight '97, 8125, 450+, 452X, TS1, etc. Basically these are all Dyneema or Dyneema based string materials.

The fellow was correct about one thing--these mateials do have a lot less elasticity to them. However, if the bow and string are both made correctly, there shouldn't be any problems at all. With the bow, it doesn't mean just beefing up the tips with micarta, phenolic, etc. The string grooves also have to be cut at the proper angle. In the string, if you use a low number of strands, you need to pad out the loops to cushion them some. A tiny string made from these materials can be like a piano wire.

I have a pretty good idea who this bowyer is, and if it is the same one I've talked to he has his own string material he prefers, a polyester/dacron material, but different than B-50 or B-500. I'm not trying to put him in a bad light, and I've never used the material he has, but I have talked to several others who have used it, and it's not exactly what he thinks it is--mainly it stretches forever, and the amount of stretch will vary depending on the weight of the bow.

Personally, I like Dynaflight '97. If I couldn't get it, I'd use 450+ or 8125. The reason I like it isn't for the increased speed. The main way you pick up any amount of speed with these materials is to use fewer strands. I don't like a tiny string myself. I like it because it's super tough, lasts a long, long time, and it isn't continually stretching/creeping (so I don't have to constantly check and adjust my brace height). These materials also reduce hand shock in a bow. My main objective isn't speed, but I'm not going to put a linen, gut, or sinew string on my longbow that has phenolic on the tips, Gordon's glass laminations, and a Fuller-Plast finish on it. On a properly tuned bow and proper silencer placement, I haven't noticed much of a difference in noise. I have had some folks tell me that their string made from one of the high performance materials was a good bit quieter than dacron on their bow.

I've been shooting the same longbow and recurve for about 10 years now. Neither of them have ever had a dacron string on them. Most of the time it's been Dynaflight '97, but I have experimented with other high-performance materials on them. Admittedly, I don't shoot my recurve much--it's my bowfishing bow. However, my longbow has been put through the wringer, and it's no worse for the wear. I've only heard of a very few bows damaged by the string, and the ones I know of personally were because they were old bows that weren't built for the material and it literally sawed the limb tips off. I'm 99% sure the loops weren't padded either.

On the other hand, I've broken a few bows, and heard of several others breaking, that had dacron strings on them. I don't think for a minute the string is what caused them to break, but when you have a "Fast Flight" string on a bow and there is a problem, it seems the string materialwill always get the blame. It's never because the bow wasn't built right, or there was a weak spot that was overlooked, or the string wasn't made properly, etc.

If this bowyer doesn't like these materials, and you shoot one of his bows, by all means only use the string material he recommends. However, there are gobs of other bowyers out there that not only warranty, but recommend high performance materials on their bows. They understand how the materials work, and know how to build their bows to accept them. My favorite bowyer has built well over 12,000 bows, and loves the high perfomance materials (mainly Dyna '97 and 450+).

On the Viper, check with your dealer and see what the recommendations are. Don't put a high performance material on it if it wasn't built to accept them.

Chad