OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Hello guys,

I am looking for fast short pips for my backhand which allow me to do powerful backhand punches. They also have to be rather insensitive to incoming spin.
So they do not have to be spinny themselves at all, because as a forehand orientated player my forehand (with inverted rubber) will do all the spin magic.

I think pips like Nittaku Moristo SP or even Friendship/729 802-40 are too sensitive to incoming spin, are they not?

Greetings

Allquantor

Hello Allquantor,

I have partial knowledge of your subject. I play Seemiller style and do A LOT of blocking, and I've tried about 5 or 6 short pips.

802-40 is grippy, but it is very slow compared to Moristo SP. 802-40 is a medium speed SP. I just used TSP Spectol Red sponge, 1.9mm. It is CRAZY FAST. Almost twice as fast as 802-40. It is fantastic for blocking and I was amazed at how it was not sensitive to the spin against loops. In 8 or 9 matches. I NEVER missed a block due to the incoming spin causing me an error. And I know very well how many times my inverted rubbers cost me the point because I forgot to allow for the incoming spin! Spectol is awesome. It is great for hitting too. However, I chose to stop using this super fast version of Spectol because I could not control it well for pushes or chops. It is a dream for blocking and hitting.

I have read that the topsheet on the different Spectol versions is basically the same. And I have read that the original Spectol is slower than the red sponge version. It probably is a great rubber for blocking, hitting and pushing, because it is a 8/10 for speed, the Red sponge is a 10/10 for speed.

I believe that none of the $20 Chinese SP are fast.

Have played a bit with SP in 1.4mm and yes it is good at punches. They say 1.8mm is better as less bottoming out if you have a hard blade. Waran is also good at fast punches and hitting but not as easy to control as SP.

Thanks for your sharing your experiences, guys!

The TSP Spectol sounds interesting, but I think the slowest version would be suitable for me. I need to control pushes because I usually return a short low serve with a (deep) push and after that I switch to an aggressive style with punching and hitting (and blocking).

Did you find what you were looking for? If so what pip did you decide to use?

_________________
Donic Waldner World Champion 89 FL; Donic BlueStar A2 (Red) Max; DMS Firestorm (Black) 1.8

Waran is 21$ but made in china and its fast on 2mm.

I don't recommend any cooked short pips for punching or hitting through topspin. I have seen a lot of YouTube tutorials where skilled players use cooked pips to do so, and make it appear quite easy, but unless you have a lot of time to be trained, you will find that raw pips are much easier to use for what you need them for. 802-40 is not as bouncy as Moristo or Blowfish, but still too bouncy against heavy topspin. Also, need to use a stiff blade and keep the sponge no more than 1.9 mm., from my experience. 1.7 seems to work best. Raw pips generate very little spin compared to cooked pips, and thus are not very effective in producing short serves, but they can produce very fast and deep, light or no spin serves.

Its hard to find the old spectol I think that the french chinese players used spectol speed sponge but now I guess she plays with spectol 21