OOAK Table Tennis Forum

It depends a bit on your style of pips-out play, the kind of rubbers you use, and your ability.
If you mostly block and hit, carbon may work; but if you vary your strokes more and want to be able to produce spin, carbon generally does not help, as the grip on the ball tends to decrease.
If you use very grippy pips, carbon may work; if you tend to use more classic pips, carbon generally does not help.
If you are a very accomplished player, carbon may work; if not, it generally does not help, as it makes the set-up too fast for comfortable control.
Remember that pips-out play is about precision, which makes control very important. Carbon blades are stiffer than all-wood blades, which means they will deform less on impact, and that helps with control when you hit; but it also makes blades faster and that may be a disadvantage even when you hit.
In my experience, especially for amateurs, OFF- or even ALL+ is fast enough for close to the table pips-out play, and you do not need carbon blades for that class of speed. The best blade for pips-out attack styles, generally, is still an all-wood 7ply, not too rigid, not too fast. There was (a couple of years ago) a South-Korean female penholder pips-out attacker who used a Butterfly Timo Boll carbon blade (I forgot her name, Lee Eun Hee or something like that, she was nicknamed Twinkle-Toes on account of her astonishing footwork) and she was quite successful, but never against fast driving Chinese opponents - she could not cope with the incoming speed, you could see how because of that the trajectory of her balls was much too flat and her balls went quite often long. That, in my opinion, is the risk of playing with very fast, very rigid blades.

The effect of carbon plies is more pronounced if they are closer to the blades' surface. Covering them up with two plies of wood is a good thing. If the outer plies are soft, that helps as well. You would want a stiff but relatively soft blade if you would want to use a carbon blade for pips.
As for the Yasaka Ma Lin Carbon blade, I have never used it, but as far as I know it was designed for inverted rubbers. That means you might just have too little grip when you use it with classic short pips. If you insist on carbon, there is soft version of the blade, which should do a bit better in this respect.

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Without opponent, no match.

Wow! great post. Thanks Kees, I'm a fan.

Now that balsa blades are out of my choices, I'm thinking of pairing my anti rubber with a 1-ply hinoki blade. What are your thoughts about this?

Hi,
I started playing with Yinhe T-11 Balsa blade and it is good.
I used Rhino anti spinon bakhand and forehand donic bluefire m2.
I could win against established players few matches.
i think will improve with time.