OOAK Table Tennis Forum

I spent 45 minutes tonight hitting with the VKM. Mine is 92g and I put on one coat of minwax wipe-on polyurethane to seal the blade yesterday. The bh rubber was a new sheet of FLII 0.5 while the fh was an old sheet of Stiga Airoc soft 1.9 (about two months old I think).

Disclaimer: I'm new to chopping and defending in general but have been playing tt seriously for 10 years and for an adult beginner reached a modest level (usatt 1400, intermediate roughly) as an offensive looper.

First impressions: yes it's soft and pretty dead and numb feeling. Really quite slow, much slower than the ALL+ blade I was using as a looper (BBC Ramin Cross). The Xiom Aigis I had been using for the past month or so was I think a bit slower. Moderately flexible, less so than the Aigis though. The handle is wide but narrow so compared to the Aigis it felt a little small but nothing I couldn't get used to. The total weight of the set up was 173g, so on the light side, but it felt quite head heavy.

The 45 minutes was spent with a local pen hold player who has pretty spinny and strong loops. Blocking was very easy, not a problem to keep blocks low and to redirect them even against very spinny loops. Looping/counter looping is not the strength of this blade so naturally it wasn't very good but it wasn't terrible. I felt the Aigis was actually a bit worse in terms of looping. The thing that really amazed me though was the feel on chops, it was really incredible. The control over chops was amazing. I just started chopping with lps a few months ago and I think even in casual training my rate of landing chops on the table is about 50%. Tonight I was around 80 or 90% and I felt much more confident chopping with the pips than I did with the Aigis (also with FLII). Overall I was pretty impressed with it, I wish I could have stayed longer and kept chopping but tragically had a work obligation tonight!

Well that's it, I'm pretty happy with it overall just have to find a good fh rubber now.

I recently got this as a gift w/ Xiom Omega on FH and D.tecs OX BH.

Coming from an allround, it's basically an enlarged ALL blade and vibrates like one, which means it's pretty comfortable for chopping, and more than fast enough w/ latest esn rubber. Mine is apparently from the newer batch that's superthin, ~5.15mm. Doing a bit worse first couple weeks since it's harder to keep pushes very low and unattackable mostly because of the rubber compared to old sheet of Yinhe.

The bigger face means it feels bit head-heavy despite the reasonable overall weight, so what I usually do instead of choking way up on the blade like many choppers is affix a coin to the end of the handle (blu-tack works well).

The JSH's have bit heavier heads, and Defplay just have hollow handles (so you can add more weight to the handle to achieve same thing, coins slot in perfectly into donic's end gap). Defplay is also smaller, and size is far and away the main cause of head-heaviness.

Also, contrary to popular opinion I don't think heavier is better for anything. Perhaps less bad w/ chopping than extra weight for looping, but still requires more energy to accelerate even if gravity helps a bit

I finally had a chance to play with this blade, with rubbers Victas 401 2.0mm and Dtecs OX on BH.

It looped really well, loads of spin and plenty of speed. Away from the table you can feel some flex in the blade, giving it a kick of extra power.

For the pimples it felt stiff and hard for the short game, but very controlled and with good reversal. I love it for the shorty game, and even for pushing aggressive against backspin, only when chopping away from the table I had to get used to the harder feel compared to my balsa blade.

Hey Alex,

compared to Balsa-blades the feel will surely be very different. Compared to balsa-blades it will also surely loop well .

VKM has Limba outer plies, so compared with most non-balsa 5ply wooden blades it will feel fairly soft, esp. with OX. I loved it for chopping with Palio CK531 OX. The outer plies of a balsa blade are usually harder than Limba, but the balsa core indeed gives a feeling of softness and dampening at lower impact.

Just perfect analysis

Mine or Pipsy's?