OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Obviously these are not T05 LOL ... but still, have you played with Reactor rubbers?

Corbor



Corbor "Pro"



Thunder


Tornado


Ckylin

https://revspin.net/rubber/reactor-ckylin-blue-sponge.html

I have used the first in the list Corbor, got it for about 6USD a pair from aliexpress. Glued them to a "generic" (ex-premade) Stiga blade that a friend gave me, I don't know which Stiga is, it came to my hands without rubbers, just a bat in good condition. Played a bit with this combo before I gave it as a gift to a 10yo kid in the neiborhood that plays TT with my children on my yard TT table. Good rubber for starters, soft, good control, need a lot of effort and good technique to give speed to the ball. For such cases and for this kind of money (~ $6 a pair) is a no-brainer. I hope the rubber lasts for more than 6 months (2-3 hours a week of play).

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current setup: blade: Yinhe 980 | FH: Palio AK47 Blue 2.1mm | BH: TSP Curl P1-R 1mm
looping setup: blade: Yinhe W-6 | FH: Palio AK47Red 2.1mm | BH: Palio AK47Blue 2.1mm
@work setup: blade: Yinhe 980 | FH: Yinhe Mercury2 2.1mm | BH: Yinhe Neptune 0.7mm
to-be-used setup: blade: DONIC DefPlay Senso 3 | FH: YASAKA Rakza 7 soft 1.8mm | BH: TSP SpinPips Chop 2 1.4mm

I have to concur with tzifos' experience concerning the Corbor. Also, it will last, consistent and playable, for a couple of years. I had it on one of my loaner bats (also a blade from an old premade). I used to keep 8-10 loaner (occasionally "giveaway") bats in a bag, just in case (pardon the pun). All put together as cheap or used/discarded rubbers on "worthless" blades. One of those was with such a pair of Corbor.

That Corbor bat has met its end, as has my practice of bringing loaners for the new kids. Once I left that bag in the wardrobe during regular training, and when we were done the bag was gone. Found it a couple of days later, tucked into a corner of the tennis hall with the bats piled on top, half of the blades smashed to kindling. Probably could have saved the rubbers, were I motivated to put together a few extra loaners at the time, which I wasn't...

Sounds like malcontents got a hold of your equipment. This is reason why I use a CHAIN and Padlock when I leave stuff in public places not that hard to hacksaw the chain or the padlock but it should keep away most ppl.

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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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Hi..

My order (Aliexpress ... https://bit.ly/2KCDLAOfor a pair of Reactor Corbor rubbers, just got delivered, earlier today... I just opened the packaging, to have a look @ the rubbers ...

Initial Impressions

• Both the rubbers (Red & Black) come in the same package... Not sure, if it's this way, from the factory itself.
• As soon as I opened the outer plastic covering, the first thing that hit me as an odd, chemical'ish smell...
• CAUTION - The uncut sheets are small... Infact, from all the rubber sheets I've used so far, these are the smallest.... The sheets are small (height-wise) for my Donic Defplay Senso V3... So, you may want to avoid them, if you want used them on an over-sized blade...
• Yellow coloured sponge ... No indication of the hardness anywhere on the packaging or sponge, but feels firm, when I press it.
• I haven't got a chance to weigh the rubbers, but they seem heavier than the Xiom Vega, 729 Focus III Snipe, and Palio AK-47 Blue/Yellow....

This is all I've got, so far... I'll be going down to the neighbourhood grocer, to get them weighed (as I don't have my own weighing-scale)... Will update

Hi,

The rubbers weighed-in @ 61gms(Black) & 62gms(Red), uncut ... The entire setup weighs 139gms...

Glued just the Black rubber onto a Friendship C-5 blade, along with a 388D1 on the other side...

This time, I got the rubbers glued-on professionally from a local store... After gluing, I left the setup, for around 8-10 hrs, under some heavy books... Now, here's the odd bit - I did a bounce test, where I just drop the ball onto the inverted setup, and the ball just dropped dead onto it.. Not a single bounce..The same bounce test on the Long pips side was fine...Never experienced this before...

Is this normal, for a Reactor Corbor rubber ?

That is normal for all tacky rubbers, and also most non tacky when they are fresh. There is some tack, and most inverted rubbers really aren't bouncy anyway until you "dig in".

The tack absorbs most of the energy. The mechanical action "down below", where topsheet is bent, pushing pips sideways and down to applying force in two directions on sponge, doesn't rebound in time to contribute to the bounce. Aerodynamics also contribute to the dampening effect, displacing all air in the contact area. Pips out is mechanically more direct, has less surface for the tackiness to apply, and the air displacement is insignificant.

I've glued-on many an inverted rubber, including Chinese tacky rubbers, by DHS, 729, and most recently 61 Second, and I always do a simple bounce-test. I've almost never experienced this type of behavior, whereby the ball just falls dead... I could understand, if it were the case, immediately, after I glued-on the rubbers...Infact, now, even more than 72hrs later, it's the same...



ooh.... all this sounds very science'cy .... unfortunately my brain lacks the tack, to absorb all this ....

This little collection of cheap rubbers covers surprisingly many various use cases. The worst rubber from it is of course that purple smelly Corbor. Unlike Corbor in white package the purple smells horribly, comes with extreme tackiness which fades away very quickly. Sure thing, if all dust in the room ends up on the rubber LOL. If you can bear the smell and like soft rubbers its fine ... rubber will last for a long time. After every day use for 3 moths you wash it and it is "fresh" again. The only good use of this rubber for me was to slow down OFF++ carbon blade. On all wood blade this setup was not playable due to softiness. Will I buy it again? No.

The white Corbor rubber Med Hard is actually very solid training rubber. Just for fun I put it on cheap XVT 5 ply blade (cypress - carbon - very thick balsa - carbon - cypress). Light blade generates enough brushing speed and combining with med tacky topsheet produces good spin. I would not use that racket for competition, however it is playable and I won many games using it. Will I buy it again? Yes, I did, it is cheap and I trust it.

Orange package - Tornado. One of those underrated gems. This is my favourite soft rubber to be used on BH. First of all it is not too heavy - 47g cut. You can do wonders if you know how to use wrist. Tornado is by far faster than Corbor. It has dark orange sponge, I guess 2.0mm and tacky softish topsheet. Tackiness does not disappear so quickly comparing to Corbor. Well, I glued it in September, today is April, still tacky. (I wash it after every game) But also to be fair - not playing it too often. Back in September Tornado was too fast for me. Now, thanks to H3, I improved my game and Tornado speed is spot on. If you know the feel of Palio AK47 blue or Rakza 7, Tornado is better substitute. Well, your opinion does not have to be the same as mine, but speed wise and given the price diff it performs super well, not worse than Rakza7. Will I buy it again? Yes, I did.

After I started this post I purchased black Thunder rubber. Had no clue what to expect. I just watched one video on youtube having one review comment saying that it is comparable to H3. Okay, I play a lot with H3 commercial H39 on FH. For me H3 is very difficult rubber to tame on FH. It excel in "feather touch" push game around the net and slow loops to lift the ball. The rest is very difficult to do. So I was very skeptical about Thunder but was curious to try black sponge.
Well, yeah, topsheet is different from H3 as it's not tacky. Sponge is firmer than broken DHS H3 commercial H39. I think it is 2.15 or 2.1mm. 52g cut. While hardness maybe H40 in DHS scale. I spread two sheets across two blades - one sheet on very slow Yasaka Sweden Extra 5 ply wood All+ and another sheet on heavy 7ply carbon. It does play similar to H3 on any of those blades. No catapult (or at least not until rubber breaks). Being H40 it is faster than H3 commercial. With powerful swing balls buzzes loaded with top spin. I dont know how does it work, as topsheet is not tacky while sponge is firm. Maybe there is some tiny catapulting but not as much noticeable comparing to Palio AK47 or CJ8000. In short game it plays well too. BH: not as sharp as Tornado. Thunder is classic hard Chinese minus tackiness. I think sponge has more hidden properties, case this is the first rubber where I did not have to adjust my game coming from H3! Will I buy it again? Yes instead of H3 commercial. Honestly it is much easier to maintain non tacky rubber, also it plays the same in the beginning of the session or after 3 hours. My tacky rubbers loose their tackiness by 20% to the end of the evening, and want to be cleaned again, while topsheets like Thunder just last.

The first thing one will notice about Ckylin is difference between red and black. Black looks and feels lower quality. I did not play with Red, just gift it to my friend. The black one med hard is not hard at all. Bouncy. Quite bouncy due to blue cake sponge. The black topsheet looks weird. It is not smooth. Not tacky at all. I mean zero tackiness, even less than Palio Hadou 40+. Rubber covers do not even stick to it.
As mentioned it has cake bouncy sponge so still produces fair amount of spin. Easy to play on BH, easy to play on FH. Makes this funny "tsick" sound suggesting sponge is working well. Will I buy it again? No. The only reason is that if I were for a cake sponge I would get Sanwei Target National.

Corbor is a typical Chinese "training rubber" (see my looooong thread about "training rubbers"). So it's cheap, and often sold two in a packet for a low price, aimed at the (Chinese) schoolkid buying rubber with lunch money. Other examples are 868 and "Batwings". If there is something that distinguishes it from the others, it sometimes starts out as ultra-tacky, so much so that pushes sometimes die in the net. Like other tacky rubbers, the tackiness soon goes away - after maybe 2 months it's hardly tacky at all. (My theory is that the tackiness is actually some sort of glue that they apply, and it's applied using that plastic sheet you have to pull off before you can use the rubber.) I don't think it's any harder or softer than its peers (Batwings, 9000, 868..) - they all list the hardness as 42 degrees, IIRC (868 actually says it's "41 +/- 1" degrees.. ).

There are QC issues, as you'd expect with anything this cheap. The first batch I bought, half the sheets were about 58 grams uncut, the other half were more like 68. And if you let them sit around for 2-3 years, the topsheet will often separate from the sponge (868 is BAD for this...). I don't know if the "pro" versions are any better - I have a couple of sheets but have not tried them yet (hopefully they're still good).

The only other Reactor sheet I tried was Ckylin. There's a couple versions of this - one has "cake sponge" and the other doesn't. They're both advertised as "Chinese Blue Fire", so imagine my surprise when I found they're more like Tackiness Chop speed-wise! I even tried boosting the heck out of them, but they didn't improve much. It would probably make a nice chopping/blocking rubber if you could find it in thinner sponge (I don't think you can). Maybe if you leave it out in the sun you could make good anti out of it...



Actually, there's one sheet that's really famous for this - Hurricane 3. And it keeps doing it after the tack has disappeared, which puzzles me. Drop the ball on the racket face and it hardly bounces, yet if you apply power you can generate tons of speed and spin with it. This is supposedly the reason why the top Chinese players use it (though I've been told they universally dope it).

Iskandar

Well, quite honestly, I realized the same thing, once I started playing with it, which was around a week back.... I was just feeling too lazy to post it here...

Yes, on the bounce-test, the Reactor Corbor felt dead, and useless... So, I took it to the club, just to see if it was playable ... To my surprise, not only was it playable, it was amazing...

It's over a week, of playing with the Corbor, and here're my thoughts...

• Control, and then some - is the first thought, that comes to mind... Against some players, at my level, or lower, if felt like I just could not hit the ball long, even if I wanted to...
  
• I feel I can place the ball, where ever, I aim to do so ... Even most of the LPs I've played with, don't offer me this luxury..
  
• Pretty spinny - Serves, pushes, and even loops... I feel it's spinnier than the Xiom Vega Euro, Palio AK47 Blue, 729 Focus III Snipe, but less than DHS HN3, at this point, atleast... I'm guessing the spin will reduce, as the tack wears-off...
  
• Weirdly, I also find it to be a bit less sensitive to incoming spin, especially on incoming serves...
  
• The rubber may seem slow, but I found it to be okay for flat-out and top-spin attacks, if you put some muscle into it... At times, I found it lacking the kill factor, but more often that not, I feel it's capable of finishing-off the point, even against higher-level players... Loops are quite spinny, and to return them, my opponents have to close the bat-angle more, or the ball just flies-off long.. My top-spin technique isn't exactly good, but whenever, I've managed to get a proper brushing stroke, I've been rewarded..
  
• I feel the rubber excels at blocking, even against power-loopers....Same with jabs
  
• With this rubber, I feel I can just keep pushing (over-the-table), forever ... never netting or going long..
  
• This is the first inverted rubber, with which I've had atleast a bit of success, chopping away from the table, against atleast mild top-spins...
  
• I feel that the tack has already started to wear-off, gradually...
  
• I guess, the rubber would be okay for chopping, away from the table.. Don't expect to hit out-right winners, from even mid-distance from the table...
  

I'll post my thoughts and observations, after long--terms usage ... Let's see how it is, after the tack wears off..