As someone who strings a ton of sticks, I’ve tried pretty much every mesh on the market. So when a new type of mesh comes out, I love trying it out and comparing it to other stuff on the market. In a market with lots of great mesh options, it takes a lot to impress me, and Throne Fiber really did.
The packaging of the Fiber system is done very cleanly, with each component (the mesh itself, the sidewall and the shooters) in its own hard shelled small plastic box. Although not really necessary, these boxes are nice and can easily be reused for plenty of other things, rather than the simple plastic wrapping on most mesh.
But what we’re really interested in is the mesh itself inside the box. When I first took it out of the package, it almost had a “sticky”, almost waxy but not quite feel to it. As I unfolded the mesh and started stretching it out a bit, this “stickiness” became less noticeable. The mesh is quite light and strung up without much issue. The diamonds are the standard 17mm size of most other performance meshes on the market. Most meshes are either semi-hard or semi-soft but somehow Throne Fiber seems to be a combination of both. Once I got it strung up in my Maverik Centrik U (review coming soon!) and started throwing with it, it really felt different than any other mesh I’ve used. It took about 15 minutes to “break it in” and I started really liking the feel. With the ball in your stick, it has a semi soft feel, with the diamonds really hugging the ball. This combined with the texture of the mesh gives you a great amount of hold and feel on the ball. Although Fiber has a semi-soft feel when you’ve got the ball, the release of it feels more like a semi-hard to me. The release from the mesh is great, giving you a good amount of power on your shots and zip to your passes. It is also very consistent, you know that your shots and passes will be pretty accurate. Testing it in hot, cold and wet weather, it performed the same across all of these conditions without any issue. In another head I strung a piece of the Fiber in with, using it to take face-offs, it worked quite well. It has a nice grip on the ball while still being soft enough to easily pinch and pop. The Fiber mesh is available in white as well as Ruby (red) Spectrum and Cobalt (blue) Spectrum colors, which have the color combined with black and a single striker line down the center of the mesh. These Spectrum color-ways look pretty sweet, and I haven’t seen any other mesh combine black and a color in a single strand.
The sidewall string that comes in the Fiber comes in one long single piece and feel similar to most other standard sidewall strings. The piece was long enough for me to cut four “standard” length strings for the sidewalls and triangle top string. I think this is both good and bad. The good part of this is that for complex top strings or other different stringings, you could make the strings whatever length you want. The negative of it is, there are no aglets which although you can easily burn tips yourself with a lighter, could be annoying for stringing some heads with tiny holes (I had no problem with the Centrik). The strings seem to be pretty durable and abrasion resistant, so these should last a decent amount of time. The sidewall kit is available in a good variety of colors.
The Fiber shooter kit, like the sidewall comes in a variety of colors. The kit includes one shooter cord and two shooting laces. The shooter cord comes only in white and quite thick. Although the thickness of the cord is personal preference, it does give you more feel on the ball leaving your stick than other cords I’ve used. The cord has a rough texture which also aids in giving you feel on the release. It has gold aglets that come on it that look fantastic but, combined with the thickness are pretty hard to fit through the sidewall holes on most sticks. The cord thickness also made it a bit hard to tie off the cord with a good knot, as it seemed to come a bit undone after a while. The shooter laces are soft but have a nice texture and coating similar to the mesh. They lay flat nicely and the color is very vibrant looking great. The kit does only come with two laces, so if you usually use more than that, you’ll have to pick up another set. I asked Joe about this, as I usually go with three straight, and he explained that with the 4 inch shooter rule in field, you really could only have three total (including the cord), so just having two simplifies the system. Also, with the hold that the texture of the mesh gives, you really don’t need more than that.
Overall, I really like the Fiber system. The Fiber mesh has become my favorite mesh on the market and I highly recommend it. I’ve tried tons of different types of mesh and this is the one that I think is the best. Fiber system really is the “Gold Standard” in mesh. Although the shooters and sidewall kits have a couple small disadvantages, they are also quite good, making the kit a worthwhile buy.
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