OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Mathias has kindly send me his Dr N SCAPEL OX rubber to try out. Although I have not yet had a chance to try it, here are some thoughts, review will follow later:



Initial impressions:
Pips feel quite hard and stiff, horizontal pip arrangement. They feel virtually frictionless, like many of the other Dr N ones, although the pips are a little rough, as can be seen from the pic. I'm not convinced this will add much friction, since the rubber just feels so smooth. If you rub on the pips a little hard, you can feel some friction through the edges of the pips, which might become significant against harder hit balls.

Bounching a ball on them, they don't seem as dead as somthing like SB, so this points to a bit more faster and perhaps attack oriented.

The basesheet feels hard and tough, although it's a little hard to tell how much of this is due to the gluesheet attached.

Note: I have purposely NOT read what style this rubber is supposed to be good for, since I don't want it to cloud my review.

I hope to test this rubber out by this weekend, and will report back here.

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OOAK Table Tennis Shop | Re-Impact Blades | Butterfly Table Tennis bats
Setup1: Re-Impact Smart, Viper OX, Victas VS 401 Setup2: Re-Impact Barath, Dtecs OX, TSP Triple Spin Chop 1.0mm Setup3: Re-Impact Dark Knight, Hellfire OX, 999 Turbo
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Haggisv makes those pictures look so good; I'm sure the rubber wasn't in such immaculate condition when I sent it!

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Tibhar Grass D.techs OX | Donic BigSlam 2.0mm .
Re-Impact Medusa (balsa / 1-ply cherry wood)
Frictionless strokes | Attacking pip strokes | Greggy's advice | Bollsbrother | Sebastian Sauer . . . . . .

Your first immpressions are right: the SB is more frictionless and the Monster is a bit more grippy (not as a Feint Long or a 955 of course).
The scalpel have not reach a great succes here because it was a bit to breakable at this price, it is not easy to replace it very often.

In the review (or after) could you compare it to the Saviga V?
I am quite curious about the comparison.

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Did you glue the JUIC sponge on yourself speedplay? The sponge that the Saviga V comes on is fairly soft as well, but I'm not sure what it is...

I prefer softer sponges as well, gives me better feel and dwell time on chopping, and allows me to generate more spin...

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OOAK Table Tennis Shop | Re-Impact Blades | Butterfly Table Tennis bats
Setup1: Re-Impact Smart, Viper OX, Victas VS 401 Setup2: Re-Impact Barath, Dtecs OX, TSP Triple Spin Chop 1.0mm Setup3: Re-Impact Dark Knight, Hellfire OX, 999 Turbo
Recent Articles: Butterfly Tenergy Alternatives | Tenergy Rubbers Compared | Re-Impact User Guide

Oh I can answer that one. Speedplay asked Japso (Japkso?) for advice and they did it.

Right?

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Tibhar Grass D.techs OX | Donic BigSlam 2.0mm .
Re-Impact Medusa (balsa / 1-ply cherry wood)
Frictionless strokes | Attacking pip strokes | Greggy's advice | Bollsbrother | Sebastian Sauer . . . . . .

I play Scalpel. Initial observations are correct. It's the best allrounder I've tried out of all the frictionless rubbers - I have used (some more some less) to date DR N's SB, Scalpel, Monster, Inferno, Monster, Roulette, and Hallmark's Superspecial and Original. I always come back to Scalpel.

Interested to hear people's comments about pips falling off. My sheets is over 1 year old, used 2 - 3 times per week and in new condition, other than the friction on the pips wears lower and lower all the time. If you can keep a sheet going, it just gets more slippery. I have a new sheet of Scalpel on an identical blade and it grips a lot more. So I stick with the same old one.

Look forward to your review.

Nice to hear my initial observation seem right...just hope it does not bias my review...

The pips DO seem very tough on this one... hard to believe they'd break easily...It looks it's not that elastic though... which is probably why Mathias took a nice chunk out of it when he removed it from his blade.

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OOAK Table Tennis Shop | Re-Impact Blades | Butterfly Table Tennis bats
Setup1: Re-Impact Smart, Viper OX, Victas VS 401 Setup2: Re-Impact Barath, Dtecs OX, TSP Triple Spin Chop 1.0mm Setup3: Re-Impact Dark Knight, Hellfire OX, 999 Turbo
Recent Articles: Butterfly Tenergy Alternatives | Tenergy Rubbers Compared | Re-Impact User Guide

I split solvent on the edge. I can't remember if it was glue or rubber remover. Maybe I spilt glue and tried to use rubber remover to get it off.... dunno but yeah its got a chunk out of it.

I didn't like Scalpel because I thought it played too much like soft pips without the flexibility that soft pips offered. Whilst it also played like frictionless but without the spin invulnerability that frictionless offered. However I can see that if its potential if you are prepared to work with it - but IMO I couldn't get it to work for me.

_________________
Tibhar Grass D.techs OX | Donic BigSlam 2.0mm .
Re-Impact Medusa (balsa / 1-ply cherry wood)
Frictionless strokes | Attacking pip strokes | Greggy's advice | Bollsbrother | Sebastian Sauer . . . . . .

Is there anything else you'd like to know about Speedplay?

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Tibhar Grass D.techs OX | Donic BigSlam 2.0mm .
Re-Impact Medusa (balsa / 1-ply cherry wood)
Frictionless strokes | Attacking pip strokes | Greggy's advice | Bollsbrother | Sebastian Sauer . . . . . .

I hope I can make it work for me, or at least get a good feel for what it's like...

_________________
OOAK Table Tennis Shop | Re-Impact Blades | Butterfly Table Tennis bats
Setup1: Re-Impact Smart, Viper OX, Victas VS 401 Setup2: Re-Impact Barath, Dtecs OX, TSP Triple Spin Chop 1.0mm Setup3: Re-Impact Dark Knight, Hellfire OX, 999 Turbo
Recent Articles: Butterfly Tenergy Alternatives | Tenergy Rubbers Compared | Re-Impact User Guide

Oh come on .... I haven't destroyed it beyond recognition. Its Scalpel with a little chunk missing. If I stuck it onto my Violin it would fit like a glove - it would be a perfectly pointless exercise though.

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Tibhar Grass D.techs OX | Donic BigSlam 2.0mm .
Re-Impact Medusa (balsa / 1-ply cherry wood)
Frictionless strokes | Attacking pip strokes | Greggy's advice | Bollsbrother | Sebastian Sauer . . . . . .

Perhaps I should play with 'Destroyer'

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Tibhar Grass D.techs OX | Donic BigSlam 2.0mm .
Re-Impact Medusa (balsa / 1-ply cherry wood)
Frictionless strokes | Attacking pip strokes | Greggy's advice | Bollsbrother | Sebastian Sauer . . . . . .

I wasn't referring to the chunk, I was referring to the type of rubber
I'm sure the missing piece will make NO differecne at all!

Yeah don't get Mathias near Destroyer...

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OOAK Table Tennis Shop | Re-Impact Blades | Butterfly Table Tennis bats
Setup1: Re-Impact Smart, Viper OX, Victas VS 401 Setup2: Re-Impact Barath, Dtecs OX, TSP Triple Spin Chop 1.0mm Setup3: Re-Impact Dark Knight, Hellfire OX, 999 Turbo
Recent Articles: Butterfly Tenergy Alternatives | Tenergy Rubbers Compared | Re-Impact User Guide

When you finish trying or get bored of it, Can you send it to me? Just want to try Dr.N rubber.....never try one before.

BTW. I just recorded one LP player in US, Top 5 defender. I guess he used Hallmark Original or Super special(one of frictionless). But he had a bad day when I recorded.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yldd8XIhx7M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G6olMPhxVY

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I stuck this on my spare Energy wood and I've just had a go with it against the ball machine:

- It's not as slow as I expected, a fair bit faster then SB, but still a lot slower than any of my other LP rubbers.

- Spin reversal is excellent as expected, especially on the lighter touches

- Attacking backspin seemed easy and very consistant. Chopping against backspin still allowed me to keep it quite low. When I chopped hard it actually went into the net, meaning that it obviously has some grip on higher impact.

- Attacking against topspin was erratic...when I got the angle right it worked well, but this is obviously not what this rubbber is good at. Blocking and chopping against topspin worked very well and consistant. Spin reversal was excellent on blocks, and still good on chops, but not quite as much (so it seemed).

I plan to try this against a few real players shortly, and will review further... I really want to test the extent of the spin reversal, and how much I can vary the spin when chopping against loops...

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OOAK Table Tennis Shop | Re-Impact Blades | Butterfly Table Tennis bats
Setup1: Re-Impact Smart, Viper OX, Victas VS 401 Setup2: Re-Impact Barath, Dtecs OX, TSP Triple Spin Chop 1.0mm Setup3: Re-Impact Dark Knight, Hellfire OX, 999 Turbo
Recent Articles: Butterfly Tenergy Alternatives | Tenergy Rubbers Compared | Re-Impact User Guide