OOAK Table Tennis Forum

I finally got hold of this much anticipated rubbers, so I thought I'd start a new thread and add my thoughts as I test the rubber.

Manufacturer description:
Palio THOR'S
Breakthrough by German-Chinese cooperation
China Sticky Tensor
Made in Germany
Breakthrough for FOREHAND play by German-CHinese cooperation.

On the back:
THOR'S

Once upon a time
there was a legendary Table Tennis god from the West.
His devastating shot called THOR'S hammer, made him famous.
THOR'S was comming to the East and got the secret of the Eastern Wisdom.
With this newly acquired secret, he forged an ever powerful weapon
that will strike fear into the heart of enemies and conquer the Table Tennis World.

The new rubber THOR'S has come

THOR'S -- The thunder rubber for Chinese Forehand play.
Sticky and Spinny with hard sponge.
Made in Germany according to China recipies and leading German TENSOR technoligy.
Less than 1ppm solvents, tuning not neccesary, ready to win.

Visual inspection:
Hardness marked at 54deg, which is around 42deg on my scale. This is a little harder than I expected, which worries me a little as I don't like the rubbers too hard, but perhaps the topsheet is soft enough to compensate for it. Thickness is maximum.
Weight of the uncut sheet of 169 x 169mm is 70g, which is rather heavy (0.0025g/mm2).
The sponge looks porous and has a real dry feel. I can't see, smell or feel any evidence of tuners/boosters.
The topsheet is indeed tacky. I suspect it's only mildly tacky, but it's tacky nevertheless, which is quite exciting! I'll see if I can pick up a ball with it as soon as I've glued it onto my bat.

Some pictures:
Cover:
The package and cover is pretty basic, and less impressive than many Chinese rubbers. I think they could have put a little more effort into this, but it's not a big deal.




There were quite a few dirt marks on the inside of the over, like scuff marks... not sure if they all have this:


Sponge:
The sponge had a real dry feel, and it looked like it had dried out just a little just on the surface. Didn't feel like it would affect the characteristics, but it's not quite what I'm used to from ESN.





Topsheet:
Topsheet looked top quality and the logos were very sharp. I removed the plastic protection sheet for the pictures, which is why you can see some less shiny areas around the logo. Strangely the plastic protection sheet was not put on quite straight, as if they added these after they cut the sheet.






Side closeup:
AS you can see, bigger pores than most CHinese sponges, but not quite as big as something Tenergy:


To be continued very soon

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OOAK Table Tennis Shop | Re-Impact Blades | Butterfly Table Tennis bats
Setup1: Re-Impact Smart, Viper OX, Victas VS 401 Setup2: Re-Impact Barath, Dtecs OX, TSP Triple Spin Chop 1.0mm Setup3: Re-Impact Dark Knight, Hellfire OX, 999 Turbo
Recent Articles: Butterfly Tenergy Alternatives | Tenergy Rubbers Compared | Re-Impact User Guide

So funny they put on the rubber "China Sticky Tensor"

Its like Tenergy would come with "Japan Ultimate Weapon"

Love the photos, very high quality

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"Si se imagina, se puede ^^"

Galaxy T-11+
FH: Donic Bluefire M3
BH: SpinLord Dornenglanz II (OX)

So when is the long awaited big night out?, the sheets I've seen didn't have the white areas on the sponge and the plastic was on edge to edge like it was cut with the rubber but I don't think either of these oddities are going to be any problem . It really is a low fume rubber, if only they all came like that you could have a much safer life as a table tennis rubber supplier

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Donic defplay senso
Haifu whale soft (grips-euro)
Nittaku pimplemini 1.0mm

I've had a very short session already... I'll add some comments later, but in a nutshell I really like it so far!

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OOAK Table Tennis Shop | Re-Impact Blades | Butterfly Table Tennis bats
Setup1: Re-Impact Smart, Viper OX, Victas VS 401 Setup2: Re-Impact Barath, Dtecs OX, TSP Triple Spin Chop 1.0mm Setup3: Re-Impact Dark Knight, Hellfire OX, 999 Turbo
Recent Articles: Butterfly Tenergy Alternatives | Tenergy Rubbers Compared | Re-Impact User Guide

Still showing Apollo on your FH

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Donic defplay senso
Haifu whale soft (grips-euro)
Nittaku pimplemini 1.0mm

Wise guy, heh? Fixed!

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OOAK Table Tennis Shop | Re-Impact Blades | Butterfly Table Tennis bats
Setup1: Re-Impact Smart, Viper OX, Victas VS 401 Setup2: Re-Impact Barath, Dtecs OX, TSP Triple Spin Chop 1.0mm Setup3: Re-Impact Dark Knight, Hellfire OX, 999 Turbo
Recent Articles: Butterfly Tenergy Alternatives | Tenergy Rubbers Compared | Re-Impact User Guide

Oh yeah I was just assuming it's better than Apollo so far and so it's staying on but I haven't used Apollo so it's only a guess

_________________
Donic defplay senso
Haifu whale soft (grips-euro)
Nittaku pimplemini 1.0mm

I can't speak for others, but I have a hard time keeping my signature line up with my current rubber...

OK, I've had a short practice session, as well as taking it for a spin in our local comp, so I'll share my thoughs so far.

The topsheet has quite a soft feel, and has definite tension built in like you get from other Tensors. I don't know if it's the topsheet or the spring in the sponge, but the rubber really does not feel as hard as I expected, considering the fairly firm sponge.

In addition, the feel of the ball onto the bat is surprisingly good, considering the firm sponge. With many firm sponged rubbers, you just don't feel the ball anymore, with Thor's you can feel the ball very well.

Serves:
Spin on serves is very good, similar to most tacky rubbers, and it's easier to generate high spin compared to non-tacky rubbers.

Short game:
The Thor's shines here! The feeling is slow and very controlled, and it takes little effort to put a lot of spin on the ball. Although most tacky rubbers are like this too, the Thor's seemed quite insensitive to spin (for a tacky rubber), so it was more forgiving.

Looping:
The most important thing for my game, and it performs superbly here! Slow spinny loops were massively spinny. The topsheet felt very much like the Globe 999 topsheet...soft and highly elastic. However unlike the 999 (unglued), I could speed this up to medium pace loops, with both speed and spin on the increase. This gave me a great feeling of control...for slow-medijm paced loops I got the feeling I simply could not miss... I've not had this feeling since a nicely glued up 999 nat!
As you loop faster, the sponge engages more and more, and the rubbers becomes faster and faster. If you continue to brush, you still get very high spin, but if you hit through the ball more the spin stays the same, unlike T05 which gives very high spin even when you hit through the ball more.
What really stood out for this rubber, which sets it apart from other tacky firm sponged rubbers, is that the feeling of Thor's is very linear for the same stroke. As you increase the speed of the stroke, the ball comes of faster and spinnier, whereas with other tacky rubbers where there seems to be a distinct transition where the sponge kicks in, and the spin stops increasing.
Throw: For brush loops, the throw is fairly high, similar to 999 or Apollo, so I pretty much required no adjustment! For loop-drives the throw felt medium.
Speed: The low gear speed is faster than most tacky rubbers, but not as fast as many tensors or T05, although not far off. Since the rubber won't bottom out, high-end speed is still less blade dependent, which tends to slow it down a little, but for me it had plenty of speed to hit it past people. On the Tachi that I used, it gave the whole FH a more solid feel, and felt quite powerful considering this blade (FH side) is probably no faster than OFF-

Blocking/Hitting:
Performance was good for both hitting and blocking, closer to other firm sponged tensors than tacky rubbers. Tt was not particularly sensitive to spin and quite forgiving, certainly better than something like T05, but not as nice as something like Outlaw.

Sound/Glue feel:
Since the sponge is firm, the glue feel or sound is always quite low, and the Thor's was no exception. The sound was there on fast loops or hits though, and the glue feel of a stretched topsheet was definitely there too, so there's no doubt this is a true tensor!

Conclusion (so far):
For me, this rubber is as big a breakthrough in tacky rubber technology, as the Tenergy was for non-tacky rubbers. I need more time to test and find any potential weaknesses, but the benefits I've found so far are easily enough for me to change over to this rubber for my standard setup. It's easily the closest I've come to finding my ideal rubber, since the glue ban!

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OOAK Table Tennis Shop | Re-Impact Blades | Butterfly Table Tennis bats
Setup1: Re-Impact Smart, Viper OX, Victas VS 401 Setup2: Re-Impact Barath, Dtecs OX, TSP Triple Spin Chop 1.0mm Setup3: Re-Impact Dark Knight, Hellfire OX, 999 Turbo
Recent Articles: Butterfly Tenergy Alternatives | Tenergy Rubbers Compared | Re-Impact User Guide

Yep, as I said.



I disagree. I hate the feel. I can't feel the ball as much as Vega Pro, which itself has less feeling than Platin. Which already has a bad feel on soft blades.



This is the difference between Chinese and European / Japanese rubber. The former require you to put your body weight into the stroke and have good brush speed to overcome and benefit from the tack. The latter rewards the weight a lot more.

I realised how poor my brushing had become after using Vega. It simply doesn't reward a good brush speed, often the ball would slip and the extra spin wasn't that high.



The main problem I have with this rubber is that the sponge, although firm, still continues to distort, no matter how hard I loop. I want a firm sponge to stop distorting at a point, so I can really drive the ball.

By 'firm' I was referring to rubbers like BWII, Grip-S or the Hurricanes (neo)... which are similar hardness sponge, but have less ball feeling. As a guess the Vega Pro is probably quite a but softer than this, so you'll feel the ball better. No doubt T05 has more feel of the ball too, but neither the T05 nor the Vega Pro are tacky

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OOAK Table Tennis Shop | Re-Impact Blades | Butterfly Table Tennis bats
Setup1: Re-Impact Smart, Viper OX, Victas VS 401 Setup2: Re-Impact Barath, Dtecs OX, TSP Triple Spin Chop 1.0mm Setup3: Re-Impact Dark Knight, Hellfire OX, 999 Turbo
Recent Articles: Butterfly Tenergy Alternatives | Tenergy Rubbers Compared | Re-Impact User Guide

I agree with everything haggisv has said here, for people that only use tacky rubbers this is their tenergy. Actually it's a much bigger percentage better than anything else than tenergy is to the other grippy rubbers. I'm surprised you got used quickly enough to write what you did since it's very accurate because I didn't find out just how good it was for a few weeks, mostly understanding the linear speed increase and the spin going with it

_________________
Donic defplay senso
Haifu whale soft (grips-euro)
Nittaku pimplemini 1.0mm

Vega pro feels considerably softer and definitely less dense than the chinese rubbers mentioned. It's supposed to be quite a hard tensor - 47.5 - however I thought it felt and played softer, more like a 45 deg.

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Chasse Patate

The Thor's is marked 55deg, which presumably uses the same scale.

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OOAK Table Tennis Shop | Re-Impact Blades | Butterfly Table Tennis bats
Setup1: Re-Impact Smart, Viper OX, Victas VS 401 Setup2: Re-Impact Barath, Dtecs OX, TSP Triple Spin Chop 1.0mm Setup3: Re-Impact Dark Knight, Hellfire OX, 999 Turbo
Recent Articles: Butterfly Tenergy Alternatives | Tenergy Rubbers Compared | Re-Impact User Guide

The Palio Macro ERA is the same in terms of the sponge, it says 47.5 degree hardness but it definitely feels and plays softer than that.

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"The greatest teacher, failure is"
USATT Rating: 1708
Blade: DMS Carbon Deluxe
FH Rubber: Tibhar Evolution MX-P 1.9
BH Rubber: DMS Scandal 1.2