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WORD OF WARNING: Yasaka Shining Dragon Sponge is BRITTLE AS HECK ! Very very brittle sponge !!! If you are going to cut it, please use a very very ultra sharp blade and go over the sponge MANY MANY times GENTLY ! Keep scoring the sponge until you get through to the topsheet and only then do a FINAL PASS of cutting the topsheet in one clean firm continuous fluid motion.
In case no one noticed, the Yasaka Logo and text on the red rubber is NOT PERFECTLY CENTERED so if you tend to stick rubbers based on the Rubber logo you will have an offset cut which is what happened to me for the first time.
Yasaka Shining Dragon has the same slight tackiness similar to Yasaka Rising Dragon. Barely lifts the ball for 1 second. Rubber topsheet is very grippy. Both Black and Red topsheets show similar properties.
YSD sponge is definitely harder than YRD. Black rubber with blue sponge
and Red rubber with red/peach sponge. Both Red and Black sponge feel the same. Update 1: I had about 1 hour hit practice with this rubber. YSD is definitely slower than YRD. Even though the YSD sponge "felt" softer when squeezing between the fingers, YSD sponge just feels like a harder sponge when playing. YSD is a traditional Chinese classic rubber. Hard feel, slow spinny rubber, good for short push game, long loop-counterloop rally etc. I almost felt like I was playing with an unboosted H3 Neo rubber! Though the tack is not at all anywhere near H3N, the topsheet is very grippy. You can get a very consistent brush loop going and this rubber I would think is as spinny as an unboosted H3N.
So YSD Red rubber and YSD Black rubber both have the same characteristics of a classic Chinese rubber like H3N. YSD serves are moderately spinny and you can keep the ball really low and short. Blocks are good but YSD is more medium throw rubber. If you keep a neutral bat angle the block will just barely clear the net in comparison YRD is a low-throw rubber and requires either you block the ball just on the bounce or a much more open bat angle to block against topspin to just clear the net.
Im having mixed feeling about it now. The Yasaka Shining Dragon doesn't seem to shine as a classic Chinese rubber. Its not sure-tacky or super-spinny or super-fast or "catapult-y" or weird throw or super-heavy or super-lightweight. Where is the "shine" in this dragon ? Perhaps Yasaka's famous QC ?
If YSD is anything as good quality and durable as YRD is continuing to be I think without a doubt all classic Chinese-type rubber buyers can most assuredly spend the bucks on YSD in the long-term all those 5 - 10 USDs are going to add up to the ~30/40 USD pricing on the YSD
MarkV / maybe Valmo? for the beginners,
Rakza line of rubbers for the Euro type players,
YRD for the in-betweeners of Euro-Chinese type players,
YSD for the classic Chinese type players.
Only thing that is left to try is Falco on these rubbers. The blue-sponge for black and peach-rose sponge for red reminds me so much of the dubious 729 SuperFX rubber sheets I recently bought that turned out to be non-tacky SuperFX !
Unlike the YRD Carbo-sponge, the YSD sponge should be boostable especially considering how brittle it is ! The YSD sponge is a flake monster, just like how Palio Thor's yellow sponge is horribly brittle and hard. I would be very very cautious playing over the table surface and near the edges. Hit the rubber anywhere on the table and you are going to be crying from the damage. Thick foam edge tape covering all the way to the very edge of the rubber topsheet is highly recommended. I haven't observed any difference between YRD topsheet and YSD topsheet. Phyiscal appearance seems to differ only in the sponge.
I will continue to test it and update if there is any significant findings.
Overall I am very happy with the performance of YSD as I was really expecting the classic Chinese feel from it. YRD is still the rubber that works perfectly for my game. YSD will work better for me once I start getting more into a power game and need to sustain long rallies. Right now I don't have the full strength needed to use and exploit the YSD rubber properly throughout an entire play session.
and also I was soooo excited I glued it up and cut it before I realised I had not weighed the sheets without the wrappers !
. Although, after an hour of training with Chinese coaches I basically try my best not to collapse and die from intense footwork drills.