OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Hi friends,
as a developing player lurking on this forum for a good year now I am pleased to be making my first post.

Please recommend a FH rubber for me (I don't chop with FH). I'm strongly considering:
a) Donic Baracuda
b) Tibhar FX-S

My 5ply off- blade is splintering and I am replacing it with a stiffer+harder off- 7ply that should pair nicely with OX Grass Dtecs on BH.

I have 6+ months experience with:
a) H3 Neo (unforgiving of my beginner compact strokes and tacky messes up smashes)
b) Vega Euro DF (too bouncy and springy)

Service is my game's strongest element and I won't compromise it when choosing a new rubber. I am constantly working on my Opening Loop against underspin and will go for it 100% of the time I can get into position.

My deceptive service and returning opponent's serve with Dtecs twiddle push creates a lot of loose high balls, so I end up playing Drives or Punches pretty frequently. I tend to play closer to the table.


Tons of players sing praises of Baracuda as super spinny, but slower than the latest generation of rubbers. This is good for a developing player right?

The FX-S is suppose to be an EL-S top sheet with a softer and slower sponge. This sounds good for the harder blade and when I twiddle the inverted to my BH.

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PS: I understand that no rubber is magical. I'm not going to get the ultimate Looping rubber that's perfect in the short game and can ignore spin while flat hitting.

I'm training my technique daily and do not blame my equipment for my shortcomings.

Baracuda or Rakza 7... I really wouldn't sweat it too much. A lot of sheets would work equally as well. Sounds like you want something slowish and soft. Lots of choices, and I'll bet 95% of them will work just the same.

Iskandar

Hi,

My secondary setup is a Stiff'ish balsa core blade, on which I have a 39-41° Friendship/729 Focus III Snipe, along with Pogo OX LP, and it works well for me.

The Focus III Snipe, is not your typical Chinese rubber - It's more of Euro/Jap type.. It comes in varying degrees of hardness... It's more on the lines of a Sriver/Mark V, and Xiom Vega Euro (Less Bouncy)...

Another option would be the Palio AK47 Blue... After playing with it (On A fellow Clubmate's setup), I've ordered 2 sheets for myself, just last night.

Focus III Snipe:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/729-FOC ... 40769.html



Yeah, it does come in 42, 44 and 46 degrees. About $12 a sheet including shipping. One day I'll buy a sheet - I've seen so many people recommend this I should try it out. Mind you, it's not the only non-tacky Chinese rubber out there. There's Yinhe Mars II and Big Dipper, and there's 729 Battle I (or II - can't remember which one is tacky and which non-tacky). The last two are $20 rubbers, and reputed to be fairly fast. And yes, the new AK47 (the Blue is just the softest of the three options). I have a sheet of AK47 on the way. (By now I know enough that I'll probably be disappointed..)

Iskandar

I don't know - I find AK47 be somewhat different.

_________________
USATT: 1807 | League: 1887

Here's hoping..

Mind you, if you've ever read any of my so-called "reviews", you'll know that among the rubbers I found "disappointing" were Exolution MX-P, Rakza X, Andro Rasant and Rasant Powergrip, Yinhe Big Dipper and DHS Tin Arc 3. None of these were bad rubbers - in fact, I found them all spinny, controllable, easy-to-use rubbers. The thing though was that so were pretty much all the others I've tried (with a couple exceptions), including a lot of $5 and $10 Chinese sheets. The problem was I was expecting MORE. The advertising (especially for Evo MX-P and the Andro rubbers) made you think these were super-rubbers - you'd immediately get tons more spin and speed than the others rubbers could produce. In the case of MX-P, the advertising verbiage leads you to think it's some sort of ultra-powerful rubber only professionals could use, that it was beyond the abilities of a mere hobbyist to tame it. In other words, to NOT disappoint me, it would have had to be something I couldn't really use, because it would be so uncontrollable only a pro could use it, and I'm not one of them. This was so far from the truth it was laughable. I used that sheet for several months (and would boost it ever so often because, like rubbers of this type, it would shrink and go "dead" in a short while) because I paid so darned much for it I HAD to get my money's worth. By the time the topsheet had gotten really grotty it was time to move on, rather than buy another sheet of it. See what else was out there.

So you can see why I THINK AK47 Blue will disappoint me. Doesn't mean I think it'll be a bad rubber. Just not something that will transform my game and suddenly add 150 points to my rating.

Iskandar

thanks for the replies!

I'll order a sheet of the focus snipe 3 and slap it on a blade when I get a chance. At $12 inc shipping, I'm sure its bang for the buck and worst case I can gift it to a club mate.

Iskandar, I've read a handful of your reviews while digging around the forum this year and I appreciate them! I'm surprised to hear your opinion on the mx-p is contrary to a lot of reviewers.

Seems like players who stand behind the Rakza 7 and Baracuda do so with strong conviction. Where the FX-S gets more of a quiet nod of approval.

After trying all sorts of rubbers I've come to the conclusion that which particular rubber one uses doesn't matter that much - they're really more alike than different. They ARE different, just not enough to make a difference (to ME, though perhaps to a high level player, they do need that extra 2-3% to be competitive - which is why so many of them play with Tenergy 05 despite what it costs). You can more or less put them into broad categories - tacky Chinese, non-tacky Chinese, cheap Chinese, expensive Chinese, soft Tensors, medium Tensors, hard Tensors, etc.... and the differences within each category are even smaller, especially when you realize that all Tensors are made in one factory in Germany, and a lot of Japanese rubbers are OEMed by one factory in Japan (Butterfly has it's own, but they ARE listed as a customer of Daiki, so SOME of their sheets might be made outside). The Evo rubbers, by the way, are of indeterminate provenance - Tibhar's quite coy about it, and there are signs that at least parts of it are made in Japan (the large sheet size for instance).

The above applies, of course, to a certain TYPE of rubber - inverted, non-anti, max sponge or close to it. And blades are a different matter - they really feel quite different from each other.

Iskandar

Hi,

I received my AK-47 Yellow , yesterday, and I glued it to my 25+year old Jonyer-H., with a Mark V on the other side..... Today, I player, just a wee bit with it... Here're my initial impressions :-

PLEASE NOTE : My style of play, nowadays, is primarily defence. I play with an OX LP, on the BH. I put this rubber, on what is now, one of my secondary blades...

- It's not as light, as I thought it'd be... This could also be due to that fact that I now play with the setup in my profile, or another one, which is an XVT Balsa Hinoki Carbon

- The sponge is, as the description says - Medium (leaning a tad towards soft'ish)

- The topsheet surface has that sandpaper kind of finish. I've noticed this in quite a few rubbers, thesedays

- Produced an odd hollow'ish clunky sound, when bouncing the ball on it, or playing..

- I found it to be on the faster side... Yet, it seemed fairly decent , control and consistency wise, while pushing as well as looping...Lifting back-spin was not bad, either... For some reason, I netted most passive blocks with this rubber... Could be a technique thing...

- Did not give me that crisp feeling.. This could be due to the blade..I'm not sure if a blade, leaning towards Soft-Flexi, is a right match for this rubber..... I'm going to try to get hold of a more stiffer blade, to try this rubber with.

Anyone else, played with this rubber ?



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Isn't yellow the hardest one? Lots of people are recommending the blue, I haven't seen much talk about the yellow.

Iskandar

Yes, Yellow is the lesser known sibling on the Red & Blue...

There're 3 variants on the AK-47 - Red (Hardest/Fastest), Yellow, Blue (Softest/Slowest)

The Yellow, sits between the Red & the Blue. I didn't want the Red, cause I thought, it'd be way too hard n fast for me, and I didn't want the blue, cause I didn't want something soft, and also, that I already have something kind of similar - Xiom Vega Euro...

However, the Yellow (I learnt, after I played with it) is that heaviest of the 3.

Baracuda

_________________
Smile in the mirror. Do that every morning and you'll start to see a big difference in your life.

Yoko Ono

Hmm. My TinArc 5 did this same thing. Not sure why, and it seems to have stopped doing it.



And there's the old-style AK47 also (and maybe even more than one type of this - biotech sponge, GP sponge, etc).

Iskandar

Oh yeah... The Original AK-47, and the AK-47 Biotech...

I played with the AK-47 Yellow, once again, this evening...

Produced decent spin n speed, even upon light brushing contact...

All-in-all, I enjoy playing with the Focu III Snipe + XVT Balsa Hinoki Carbon, more than I enjoy the AK-47 + Joyner Combo... I'll play some more with it, though, and if it just does not do it for me, I'll slap it onto a Stiffer blade.