OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Gambler has an oversized rosewood blade that I was a little confused about: (https://www.zeropong.com/wood-blades-sh-mod-c-45_92/gambler-rosewood-classic-oversize-speciality-blade-p-353p) On their site it says that the blade is "comparable to high end custom hand built blades." I've never played with a hand built blade before so this is a little vague to me.

I tried guessing how the blade plays by looking at the wood composition, but unfortunately the impressive wood properties thread here (https://ooakforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=12687) doesn't list rosewood.

Does anyone have this blade? How does this blade play? Is the ALL rating accurate?

I suspect they're like other similar blades. If you look at Stiga's line, there are 7 ply and 5 ply rosewood (and ebony) blades - I understand that the 7 ply ones are essentially Clippers with rosewood outer plies, and the 5 ply ones are like, oh, I don't know.. Allround Classics? So you'd expect the 7 ply ones to be relatively fast, with the rosewood outer ply adding a little to the speed and to the overall hardness of blade's surface (which would give higher frequency vibrations). The 5 ply ones would be similar to other 5 ply all-wood blades, just a little faster and harder in feel. Gambler's oversized blade? From the blurb on the website I imagine it'd be similar to other oversized five ply blades, just a little harder. Oversized would mean it's designed to be used with at least one sheet of pips-out, and would be too heavy with two sheets of inverted.

Considering what it costs, I'd just go ahead and buy one to find out.

Incidentally, Mek-tek Predator with the Ohtoro sponge has been added to the website. No sign of Volt-M or Volt-T as yet.

Iskandar