Rubbers to be compared:
Ritc 804 red 2.0
Juic Neoanti black 2.0
Butterfly Super Anti red 2.0
Nittaku Best Anti black 2.2
Yasaka Anti power red 2.0
Hallmark Mirage red 2.0
Dr Neubauer Anti Spin Special red 1.2 (used on Galaxy T-8)
All used on the Dawei Wavestone blade.
Ratings given is only valid in this comparison and should not be translated to other rubbers abilities. Scale is 1-10, 10 being the highest.
Grip on surface:804: 8
Neoanti: 3
Anti power: 3
Hallmark Mirage: 3
AS Special: 3
Best anti: 2
Super anti: 2
804 feels really grippy compared to the rest that all feel very slick on the surface.
Grip on/with sponge:Best anti: 9
Neoanti: 7
804: 2
Anti power: 2
Mirage: 2
Super anti: 1
AS Special: 1
The soft sponge on the Best anti gives it a lot of grip, despite this, the Neoanti seems to out spin it when it comes to generate spin on your own. The rest of them all comes with pretty hard sponges (Mirage being the exeption) and while you can get them to grip some, it not nearly as much as Best anti and Neoanti. Not sure why the Mirage sponge don't grip the ball, probably because it is so "dead" so even if it deforms on impact, the sponge takes forever to get back to original shape, thus giving the feeling that it don't grip the ball. AS Special has by far the least grip and comes with a rock hard sponge!
Speed:804: 10
Anti power:7
Neoanti: 5
Super Anti: 3
AS Special: 2/5!
Best Anti: 2
Mirage: 1
As the chart shows, the 804 is without a doubt the fastest of them. Super Anti and best anti are very close in terms of speed compared to each other, while Mirage is clearly the slowest of them all. AS Special is the strange one as it actually seems to come with gears. When used to block, it is dead slow, almost as slow as Mirage actually, but not quite. When used to hit, lift or even chop with, it feels a lot faster, so active play with it enhances the speed.
Spin, generating it:Neoanti: 10
Best anti: 7
804: 5
Anti power:3
Super Anti: 2
AS Special: 2
Mirage: 2
Neoanti wins this award, hands down. Best anti is also pretty good at this, while the rest of them clearly isn't intended to create spin with.
affected by incoming spin:804: 10
Neoanti: 4
Best anti: 3
Mirage: 2
Anti power: 2
Super Anti: 1
AS Special: 1
804 is affected like a sheet of old inverted and if you intend to go anti to aid your ability to handle spin, then forget about it! Minor differences between the others, but Super anti and AS Special are really the rubbers that seems to be totally unaffected by incoming spin. With this said, you still need to be aware of what spin you are working with, cause different spin requires different strokes.
Reversal:Super anti: 8
AS Special: 8
Anti power: 7
Neoanti: 4
Best anti: 3
Mirage: 2
804: 1
Super anti or AS Special are clearly the ones to pick if you are looking for replacements to the frictionless long pips. Anti power also has pretty good reversal, but it's harder to get good use of it since it's faster. The rest of them really needs good help from your strokes to create any kind of reversal, unaided blocks will almost always give a dead ball back.
Aided reversal:Neoanti: 10
Best Anti: 9
Anti power: 4
Super Anti: 3
AS Special: 2
Mirage: 2
804: 1
Neoanti and best anti are both very good at this and I believe they both play like a grippy kind of Lp. As for the rest of them, you can still chop down hard with them, but then the action is more used to deceive your opponent then to actually help the reversal. Remember, most of the time, it doesn't come down to the amount of spin/reversal you have, it is how well you manage to trick your opponent.
Deception:Best anti: 10
Anti power: 8
Neoanti: 7
AS Special: 6
Super anti: 6
Mirage: 3
804: 1
Best anti and Anti power has one thing in common that the rest of them lack, the shots made with those rubbers look like they have been made with regular inverted, trajectory of the ball and stuff like that, this makes them very deceptive as your opponent really needs to watch your bat. Neoanti, AS Special and Super anti also has very good deception possibilities, but for different reasons. With Neoanti, it is because you can create such variation on the spin, so it will be hard for your opponent to tell how much spin their is on it and sometimes even what kind of spin it has. With the Super Anti and AS Special, the deception is more about reversal actually, since the unaided reversal does most of the trick, a heavy chop stroke might fool your opponent to think there is a lot more spin then there is, while a block might trick them to think that there is less spin then there is. Mirage and 804 really doesn't do anything here, Mirage gives a dead ball back, regardless of spin on the ball and your own stroke, while the 804 gives... Well, what do you get from an old sheet of inverted? In best case, the 804 will give a dead ball back, otherwise, it reacts like inverted but to a lesser degree.
So what styles are they suited for?Neoanti and Best anti probably works best for chopper who prefers to back away from the table. If you intend to stick close to the table to play with these, twiddling is crucial!
Anti power is probably suitable for a hitter/blocker, as it has good speed and blocking abilities. Feels to fast to chop with good control, so stick to the table and hit incoming backspin as every day was the last! Twiddling isn't needed, all though it's always helpful for playing a deception type of game. If you don't twiddle, your opponent will soon enough learn on what side you have the anti and react to it.
Super Anti works as a frictionless replacement, close to the table, straight of the bounce, blocking is the thing here. Off course, it can be used for a surprising hit every now and then, but since the trajectory of the ball gives it away, good players will learn how to deal with this pretty quick and since it lacks the speed, don't expect to hit any outright winners with it. Twiddling will help a lot, especially if you always pick the ball off the bounce as this will feed your opponent very different types of spin and give him very little time to react upon it.
AS Special, as you might have noticed, feels very similar to Super Anti and should work for pretty much the same style. The advantage you get with AS Special is that once you decide to hit, you will be able to make faster shots then you will with the Super Anti. Downside is, the AS feels a lot less forgiving and the angles really have to be worked out on this to be effective. Then again, it seems to create the most wobbling of all the Antis I have tried, so perhaps it is worth the hassle with angles?
Mirage and 804, I really can't see which style this two would be beneficial to. The 804 might be able to play a close to the table hitting game, but let's face it, there are better rubbers for this. Mirage, probably intended to be used as Super anti, but it really hasn't got what it takes. To little reversal to be useful and unless you have to much money on your hands and feel like all you ever want to do with you Anti is to drop it short, with no spin, stay clear of this rubber.
As for me, I'm a little confused as too what I should use, Bty Super Anti or Nittaku Best Anti? Both have very good strengths, are easy to play with but demands different technique and playing styles to perform at their best. Neoanti is off course also a great rubber, but since I have tried the Super Anti and Best anti, Neoanti feels a little to fast Which is strange, since I still liked the Anti power that is clearly faster...
Now the AS Special have joined the battle for a place on my primary set up, seeing how it created more wobbling then the others, it was slow on blocks but still had the speed to put the ball away with and good reversal. I really must admit, despite those positive sides, I'm not sure it is worth the hefty price, since Super Anti comes so close in behaviour.
Any questions you might have, feel free to post them either in a separate tread or the original post and I will do my best to answer them with my experience from these rubbers.
I've created this tread and intends to continue to add antis as I try them, keeping it locked and stickied to keep it organised in one place.
NOTE: This thread is kept locked to keep things organised. Everything above has been copied from other thread (http://forums.oneofakindtrading.com.au/ ... 67&start=0) in this section, so if you wish to comment, please do so there.