OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Hi, everyone. I just joined the forum recently, and figured I'd take the opportunity to point you toward a SP I enjoyed using, and at the same time to steer you away from an SP that you'd probably toss in the dumpster immediately if you ever had the misfortune of playing with it. The two I speak of are Hexer pips+ and Blowfish (not +). For your reference, both sheets were max sponge, and both were played on an Andro Temper Tech OFF+.

The topsheets:
Hexer Pips+ :my first impression is that this is quality material. The topsheet is a nice, somewhat shiny (in black, anyway), relatively grippy and flexible pip, with the pips narrower than some, fairly widely spaced apart but not in a stand-out way, and a bit long, but not so much as to be considered a medium pip.

Blowfish: my first impression was that of being slightly puzzled. The pips reflected a sort of a dull sheen, and had a hard, waxy feel to them. Not so pretty at first sight. The pips are quite wide as short pips go, fairly average length (around 802 size), and are spaced fairly close together.

The sponge:
Hexer Pips+ : Very soft! Nothing else remarkable.
Blowfish: Very, very soft! Nothing else remarkable.

Speed:
Hexer Pips+ : Simply beautiful, and exactly what I think of when I think tensor short pip. Smashes shoot off like a bullet, yet thankfully it's not so obnoxiously fast that the topspin drives fly well off into space before they have a chance to dip back down to the other side of the table.

Blowfish: Well.. fast-ish on slow shots, slow-ish on fast shots. In other words, very unimpressive no matter what shot you're trying to accomplish. More on the control issue as follows.

Control:
Hexer Pips+ :This is what makes the Hexer Pips+ a truly worthy short pip to have on your bat. It embodies what one thinks of when they think modern short pip: Very low throw, very sharp hitting, slow enough on slow shots, flys past the opponent before they can blink on fast shots, adequate sink on smashes and a lovely concise trajectory on topspin drives.

Blowfish: This is what makes the Blowfish the absolute worst SP rubber I've used to date. Bear with me here as I try to make sense explaining this truly unique abnormality. The hard, spinless, waxy topsheet combines with the overly soft sponge to create a sort of "catch and throw" trajectory no matter what shot you're trying to hit. Whether drive or heavy loop coming at me, any shot blocked or hit with the blowfish (at ANY racket angle) would distinctly bounce upward off the rubber, and either go well past the end of the table or occasionally deign to courteously sink down and hit the other end at a very non-threatening angle to lend my opponent a free kill-shot opportunity. Really I can't put into words how peculiar this is. Keep in mind i was using this on a completely stiff blade, so flex was certainly not an issue. The only way to put it is, this rubber absolutely cannot hit straight, and you're doomed if you try to. I assume that Andro created Blowfish attempting to make it solely a blocking rubber, and that the objective when using it is to disturb your opponent with strange sinking effects. At this, it's marginally successful, but when considering the versatile arsenal of shots required to successfully play your way through points and games, this is about the worst, most one-dimensional yet consistently inconsisent rubber I've had the misfortune of trying. Forehand or backhand, it made no difference. This can't hit straight, isn't that fast, and simply doesn't play like a good Short pip!

Spin Sensitivity:
Hexer Pips+ :Oddly enough, while this was the much spinnier/ much grippier of the two, it had a distinctively better ability to hit through any ball. My guess is that the sheer speed and low trajectory made it possible to blast through whatever spin was on the ball (obviously one must adjust their stroke when dealing with heavy topspin or backspin, but I say this assuming the reader knows to take the correct bat angle into consideration).

Blowfish: Hitting with this was like putting all your money on 33 black on the roulette wheel and hoping you get lucky. Every time. Backhand or forehand, the ball certainly did strange things, but they were most often stranger for you than for your opponent. I suppose I have to say this rubber is fairly insensitive to spin, because well, it is, but that doesn't make it useful or more predictable in any way. The harder you hit, the weirder the ball, and spin sensitivity or lack of had little to do with it.

In conclusion: Hexer Pips+ : Good! Quite good! Almost as good as my preferred soft sponge SP Joola Tango Ultra Good!
Blowfish: Bad. Very Bad. Like; do-not-get-this-rubber-bad.

Hope that helps someone save a bit of spare change on the off chance they were eyeing the pretty cover picture and the seductive manufacturer's description on that Andro Blowfish (I know I was).

Great information Beta, and welcome to the forum!

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Thanks! I'm glad to be here. There's enough useful information floating around in the form of reviews to save me thousands of dollars in the future. I wish I'd made full use of this resource before spending all the money I've already spent

Hi, I registered to add a commment ref Andro Blowfish.
Admittedly this is my first sp rubber, and I have little experience of anything else, but I'd say my experience with Blowfish matches more with your experience of Hexer pips.
Is it possible you had a bad rubber?
I use blowfish on bh with yasaka mark v on fh, both 2.0mm sponge, on a butterfly finewood offensive blade. straight handled so i flip rubbers as the need arises. It's nice to play a couple of bh loops with the blowfish, then flip and repeat with the mark v.
Blowfish gives me spin. I can do pretty good backhand side spin serves from the centre of the table aimed at centre on the other side that curve nicely to the opponents rh side of the table. My bh pushes tend to produce a lot of side spin and curve the same way.
I can flat hit then loop and the ball drops nicely just over the net and then runs out of momentum.
I can place the ball pretty much where I want, and it goes fast and very shallow to the table.
I came up against a high percentage player in my league, who typically has a traditional serve, loop, volley game, very good "by the book" top spin game. I won the first leg fairly easily 11-4, as my counter attack on the bh with the blowfish went exactly where I wanted it to go, I was pinging the ball past him. (He then switched tactics and chopped everything, but that's another story).
regards
Robert

Is hexer pips+ the same as blowfish+ ?