OOAK Table Tennis Forum

The RITC general rubbers, cheap ones two in a pack - can anyone explain the different sponges? I ordered a pair last year and the black rubber had an orange sponge and the red rubber had a creamy coloured sponge. I read somewhere that usually the black comes with a blue sponge and the red with an orange. When you buy off those aliexpress stores is it pretty much a lottery as to what you get in terms of sponge colour etc? By the way, the rubbers themselves played nice enough (for me and my limited ability anyway).

Blue Sponge or Cream Sponge or Orange or Pink or Yellow ... it all depends on how good the quality from the manufacturer.

Normally a Blue Sponge is harder more dense with lots of porous mid-size bubble structures. It tends to be difficult to compress and able to take a lot of speed glue or booster solution.

Orange sponge is just a dense cake sponge almost miniscule bubble sizes, tends to be on the medium-hard and reacts usually to booster or speed glue.

Yellow sponge is another cake sponge with almost soapblock looking tiny bubble sizes very brittle, tends to be hardest flakiest most difficult to cut and reacts extremely to speed glue/booster and very fast maybe even uncontrollable.

Black sponge is a porous springy sponge with large bubble sizes, tends to be made by using "carbon???" to form the porous structures hence very springy but not very good with speed glue / booster.

But this doesn't mean a thing if manufacturer QA and QC are not there .... and the colours are usually just dyes added during manufacturing ... so means nothing ...

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Backup C-pen blades:

• TSP Black Balsa 7.0 :
  1. FH/BH-YRakza9/XOmegaVT
  2. FH/BH-TSP Spectol/Yinhe Qing OX
• 729 Bomb C-P : FH/BH-DHS H2 Orig/DHS H3 Orig
• TSP Versal :
  1. FH/BH-XOmegaVA/YJupiter-II
  2. FH/BH-*blank*

Fun blades:

• Yasaka Battle Balsa(ST) : FH/BH- DHS TG2Neo/Gewo HypeXT 47
• Dr. Neubauer
  High Technology
  Cypress-Carbon(ST)
  ***************************** : FH/BH-YRakza7/YRakza7

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Great summary!

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Thanks Alex I try to be helpful where I can

Glad some of my EJ'ing valuable to someone somewhere

_________________
__________________________________________________________
Backup C-pen blades:

• TSP Black Balsa 7.0 :
  1. FH/BH-YRakza9/XOmegaVT
  2. FH/BH-TSP Spectol/Yinhe Qing OX
• 729 Bomb C-P : FH/BH-DHS H2 Orig/DHS H3 Orig
• TSP Versal :
  1. FH/BH-XOmegaVA/YJupiter-II
  2. FH/BH-*blank*

Fun blades:

• Yasaka Battle Balsa(ST) : FH/BH- DHS TG2Neo/Gewo HypeXT 47
• Dr. Neubauer
  High Technology
  Cypress-Carbon(ST)
  ***************************** : FH/BH-YRakza7/YRakza7

==========================================================

Interesting question. Which led to an interesting discovery - apparently Eacheng is no longer selling Batwings. This is a shame - Batwings was the only cheap Chinese rubber that was available with thinner sponge (down to 1.5mm) and in 2 or 3 sponge hardnesses (42, 44, 46 IIRC). Yeah, color of the sponge varied - they sometimes put blue sponge behind a black topsheet, while the red topsheet had a tan or orange or yellow sponge. The color didn't really matter - with Batwings, you went by the hardness and thickness on the package.

Newcomers might be mystified by "Batwings". It's 729 rubber sold in this packaging (2 sheets in 1 packet):



This is the packaging you used to see in Chinese bookstores (even here, locally). Eacheng still sells the exact same rubber, for example:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Origina ... 91794.html

It's still cheap (if you pick among the Eachengs) but it comes without an outside envelope AND you don't get to pick sponge thickness. You MIGHT be able to get different sponge hardnesses but I'll bet not. Eacheng used to sell this rubber in three different ways - as Batwings, in bulk quantities (10 or 25 sheets IIRC, and only on the eacheng.net website) and in the blue XL packaging - this was REALLY random - I even got several sheets of 729 Super FX in one batch (and only the red ones - the black sheets in that batch were normal 729) - I think these were packaged by some third party that got sheets in huge bulk lots from Friendship, and I used to get them cheap when Eacheng held actual auctions on Ebay. Now NONE of these options are available, except that the same bulk sheets are sold two at a time.

By the way.. the use of the term "cake sponge" is incorrect here. What the Chinese mean by "cake sponge" is a large-pored sponge - the kind you get, say, with Andro Rasant or Tenergy. Think Sponge Cake. With large or at least easily visible pores. Two recent rubbers that use "cake sponge" in their descriptions are Sanwei Target National and the newer AK47s (Blue, Yellow, Red). Photo of AK47 Blue:



I've never seen "cake sponge" with the 729 topsheet, BUT you CAN buy 729 Super FX with cake sponge:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/729-Sup ... 99591.html



It costs about twice as much as regular 729. The other bit of good news is that you CAN get it in thin sponge, down to 1.0mm. There's also 729 Super FX with black sponge:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/729-Sup ... 92083.html

Obviously you can ONLY get this with the black topsheet, for obvious reasons. If you look closely, you can see that it, too, has "cake sponge". It is also available, it seems, in FIVE sponge thicknesses - 2.2, 2.0, 1.8, 1.5 and 1.0mm, for you traditional choppers out there.



Looks like I might have to get a sheet - note that the ratings (Speed, Spin, Control) are all 11 (see my "slogan" ). For the regular large-pore 729 Super FX the ratings are only 9, 10 and 11.

My experience with the big-pore 729 Super FX wasn't very positive - it seemed overly bouncy, causing popped-up pushes, and overhit drives. I might try it again at some later date. My unsubstantiated guess is that these rubbers are not official 729 products - they're either leaving by a back door at the factory or are being assembled by a third party which can get 729 Super FX topsheets. My guess is when they're gone, they're gone. You'll notice that some thickness/color combos are already out of stock or unavailable. These are Eacheng-only items, I don't recall seeing them for sale anywhere else.

Iskandar

Soap sponge, bread sponge, baguette sponge , sourdough sponge, brill-pad sponge ?

I think my use of cake sponge ... meaning very even but very small but high concentration of micro-pores ?

I hope my explanation is okay. Also from a limited experience about "pink" sponge is similar to orange sponge ... and cream sponge is more similar to blue sponge ...

But again if others have tested more of these different coloured sponges that would be great

I know you Iskandar have a veritable MOUNTAIN of rubber sheets

Like what difference between say DHS blue sponge, 729 blue sponge, Sanwei blue sponge, Yinhe blue sponge, Palio blue sponge( does it exist ? ) , Yasaka blue sponge , Donic blue sponge , etc etc etc

_________________
__________________________________________________________
Backup C-pen blades:

• TSP Black Balsa 7.0 :
  1. FH/BH-YRakza9/XOmegaVT
  2. FH/BH-TSP Spectol/Yinhe Qing OX
• 729 Bomb C-P : FH/BH-DHS H2 Orig/DHS H3 Orig
• TSP Versal :
  1. FH/BH-XOmegaVA/YJupiter-II
  2. FH/BH-*blank*

Fun blades:

• Yasaka Battle Balsa(ST) : FH/BH- DHS TG2Neo/Gewo HypeXT 47
• Dr. Neubauer
  High Technology
  Cypress-Carbon(ST)
  ***************************** : FH/BH-YRakza7/YRakza7

==========================================================

The DHS blue sponge is the "real thing", IF you believe the hype about H3 National. The others are wannabes and copycats. A lot of 729 black sheets come with blue sponge, it's probably exactly the same as the orange or yellow that they use on the red sheets, just different pigment. I think in a lot of cases they use these combos so that the black sheets are dark enough and the red sheets are bright enough, since the topsheets are a little transparent.

Iskandar

Thanks for the replies and hypotheses!

I have ordered another couple of sets of 729 general and will see what comes in.

I only started playing competitive table tennis last year when a friend took me to a local club, I needed something to do during the winter now my rugby playing days are over. He set me up with donic equipment which is good stuff, but I've now discovered all these cheap stores on aliexpress. I've also tried the CJ8000 2 side loop rubbers and they were good, and now sit on my sons' blades as they have started playing as well. Nxt on the list will be the cheap yinhe 9000 pair. I was about to order some really cheap rubbers with anti mucosal properties (love these hilarious chinese names) but I can't be bothered with the 30-50 days shipping! Ali battleship has always had the stuff delivered on or within two weeks with free shipping which I think is quite impressive.

All this mucking around is probably not good for my game, but I guess I just like tinkering around with stuff.

Thanks again.

Ali Battleship, New-new Shop, Happy Shopping 365 Days, GH Sports, Sports 100, DHS Pro Table Tennis... they're all actually the same shop. Just choose the one with the best price, the people, the handling and shipping are all the same. You can tell which of the AliExpress shops are the same, they all use the same artwork. They also sell on ebay and Amazon, check prices there too. Sometimes they're lower. And they have their own website (but there the shipping is separate).

Iskandar

So, an order for three sets of RITC general rubbers came in from one of the eacheng store on aliexpress.

Two to a pack and each rubber had a plastic film attached to the rubber surface.

First thing I noticed was that the red rubbers were very dark in color. Much darker than the ones I had ordered last year. I think this is probably due to the rubber being somewhat transluscent and paired with a darkish purple colored sponge. Below is the 729 sheet on the right, a red 729 sheet from last year in the middle - noticeably brighter in colour, perhaps attributable to the light sponge) and my donic rubbers on the left.



The Black rubbers had a very bright red sponge.





The rubbers were almost completely flat. Unlike the red 729 rubber I bought last year which had a deep dish to it. Also, the sponge is thicker than the ones I bought last year (and feel softer but its hard to tell). I gur=ess with these rubbers you simply just get what ever is on hand.

Does anyone know what the sticker on the rubbers with a number mean?

Quality certificate B
Inspection 6

Those are QC stickers. Apparently the numbers belong to the inspectors. They used to be in English, I think...

Purple sponge is new. In the past I've seen blue and orange, and sometimes yellow. There are often stamped markings on the back of the sponge that tell you something about the hardness.

Iskandar

Probably means defective sheets. At least it's certified imperfect rather than no QC at all.

Hmm.. never thought of that. So "B" means "B grade" sheets, which they sell in stacks of 500, and Eacheng sells off without packaging? Sounds reasonable.. And then the "A grade" sheets make it into the retail packaging (Batwings).

Iskandar

NO PHOTOCAMERAS, PLEASE.

Thanks to my Chinese fellow youtuber, we can now see all the particulars of how 729 rubbers and balls are made, while the 729 Tianjin manufactory is known as an institution forbidden for all the foreign excursionistes. You can always note a warning sign of NO PHOTO CAMERAS here and there in the factory interiors.
It is most thrilling sightseeing, only available for OOAK registered members. Let's go...