OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Well, I've gotten about five hours of play in with this rubber so I thought I'd post a quick review:

Appearance: very nice quality topsheet! completely non-tacky, but grips the ball quite well. The sponge is also high quality, and feels pretty soft, maybe about 35ish degrees.

Overall feel: I treated it with two layers of EE2, which gave it a pretty massive dome. The Actor has, by far, the best feeling of any non-speedglued rubber I've used . It also has the softest sponge that I've used with EE2, so it might be the synergistic effects of EE2 and a soft sponge working. The topsheet feels very responsive (a little too responsive sometimes), and I was also getting a bit of a click on cleanly hit shots.

Serving: I found serves to be acceptably spinny, but not nearly as spinny as with a tacky topsheet.

Short game: the short game takes some getting used to, but once I adjusted,pushes were easy to keep low and spinny.

Blocking: Blocking is probably this rubbers weakest area in my opinion. The responsive and grippy topsheet in conjunction with the soft sponge makes it a challenge to keep spinny loops down. However, when I do remember to angle the bat down and really cover the ball, I found the Actor was quite accurate in placing the ball where I aim it.

Looping: This is where this rubber really comes to life. I really love the feel on topspin shots both near and far from the table. There can be a ton of speed and spin, but you need to let the ball sink into the sponge a bit, because the topsheet doesn't really lend itself to brush loops.

Off the table Defense: I don't really chop very often on the forehand (with the inverted side at least) so I'm not the best judge on this but I found it to be a little lacking in control. I usually prefer to use the guided block shot that Chen Weixing and Hou Yingchao use when it comes to FH defense, and I found the Actor to excell in this area.

Overall, I would say TSP Actor is average in serving, blocking, and pushing, but excellent for looping and counterlooping, especially from mid-distance. It also performs very well without speedglue, which is not something to be taken lightly these days.

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Thanks a lot for the review JSK, that's excellent!

I'm still a little confused on whether this rubber is supposed to have a built in glue effect or not. The high tension term is used pretty loosely these days...

From your review is does sound a little similar to tensor rubbers like Tango and such... (which is good since I really like those )

Cheers!

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The description that TSP gives it claims that it has a "built in power" effect... So I think it does have a built in glue effect, but it is designed so that it can be speed glued for additional speed/spin.

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