OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Hi,

I play with the Victas Koji Matsushita Original Blade with Butterfly Tackfire Drive 1.9 on FH and 1.7 on BH.

I play an allround style but more on the defensive side with chopping far away from the table.
With the Tackfire Drive I can do almost anything very good. Chopping, blocking, lobbing, hitting etc...

Unfortunately Butterfly stopped producing this rubber and they only have the ones with thinner sponge left ( 1,3 mm )

I tried the Tackiness Drive as an alternative which comes close but was very unforgiving when the ball hit the edge of the rubber
which was very annoying and cost me many easy points in matches.

Which rubber comes close?

Currently I think about Spinlord Marder II or the Donic Coppa ( both in 1.8 mm )

I have not used Tackifire Drive but have used Marder 11 and can confirm that it is a very good all round rubber including for chopping. Also check out Pimplepark Epos.

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2. S&T Black & White / Armstrong SH-I 1.8 / TSP Curl P3 Alpha R OX

Maybe you can try Gambler reflectoid (1.5 or 2.0 mm).
I play on my defensive setup with the 1.5 mm version on the VKM and its very easy to chop/block/push. I can even relatively easy loop with it. The price is only 15$.

Long time ago I played with tackfire and tackiness D.
Reflectoid is way better in the chop/block departement. Hitting I like more with tackiness D.

Greetings!

Thanks.
I played with Reflectoid before and it was great like you said but hitting was difficult and lobbing was sometimes difficult which made me switch to Tackfire Drive.

PimplePark Epos sounds interesting. Any experience with it?

Maybe Xiom Musa III? It is suppose to be a classic rubber (kind of like Mark V), maybe someone can comment on how it does in the chopping game. It sounds like it might fit the allaround style of game play, with a little bit of everything.

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Xiom Hayabusa Z+; Victas V-15 Stiff (Black) Max; Spinlord Keiler (Red) 1.5 mm

Consider https://www.tabletennis11.com/other_eng ... -vari-spin
Affordable classic all-round rubber. Very durable. Available in different thicknesses. Chops well. Certainly worth a go.

My recommendations would be Globe 999T or Kokutaku Blütenkirsche Japan.
Those are both Chinese rubbers with a tacky topsheet and a Japanese sponge. Both are available in two different sponge hardnesses. I played both (999T currently) and like them equally.

Tacky topsheet and a classic Japanese sponge in combination play very distinctively, so I would not recommend Coppa, Musa or other non-tacky rubbers, if that feeling is what you are looking for.
Marder II is Chinese topsheet and Japanese sponge as well, but I have never played it, so can't comment.

Be careful with the 999/999T. There are umpteenth variations of this, most do NOT have Japanese sponge. If you know which one DOES have Japanese sponge, state the source, perhaps post a photo of the packaging. There used to be two companies making it (or at least, selling it) - Globe and "999 Corporation". "999 Corporation" seems to have gone bankrupt - all their sheets have disappeared from the LARC and can't be found on Eacheng any more. Pity - some of them were $5 a sheet, and they made great humid weather bats. You'll also find Juic and Akkadi selling varieties of 999 (I'll bet the topsheets come from Globe or 999 Corporation). I think you can still get Juic rubbers from Paddle Palace, by the way. If anything has Japanese sponge I'll bet theirs does. What makes 999 999? It uses a different (probably older) rubber technology for the topsheets - probably less vulcanization. It's naturally tacky (I think most other tacky sheets have a layer of glue on the surface that makes them tacky). If you store bats with 999 on it for 3-4 years the topsheets will start to melt and make a mess, especially if you have other bats in contact with it (yeah, I learned the hard way). There are other rubbers (mainly older pips-out sheets like those weird Yung sheets Eacheng sells) made with the same stuff - they melt after a while.

As per something from another thread - you're looking for something slow-ish with a tacky topsheet, right? Well, come to think of it.. there's always Hurricane 3.. Unboosted, of course. Don't know how thin a sponge you can get, though (I recall there's two options). There's also the "Nittaku" version (it's listed under DHS in the LARC, go figure) - if you want/need Japanese sponge, that probably has it - and it might come in thinner sponge.

Iskandar

I have seen players using Blütenkirsche 868 for this type of game but not sure which sponge.Varispin,Neos tacky,Tackiness chop 2 are rubbers of that ilk

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Tsp Balsa 2.5Tenergy 05 1.9 388d ox red

Butterfly Tackifire Drive Table Tennis Ping Pong Rubber Sponge[Red]
£35.51
eBay

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Tsp Balsa 2.5Tenergy 05 1.9 388d ox red

I bought a sheet of Coppa, Vari Spin and Spinlord Marder II

Vari Spin is very similar to the Tackifire Drive. Good alternative.
Marder II is also good with a little catapult. I had to adjust my technique a little bit.

For now I play with Coppa 1.8 mm. It is slightly faster than the Vari Spin and Tackfire Drive but still very good for chopping
but overall it gives me more options without loosing too much playing defensive.

Thanks for your suggestions.

I 2nd Kokutaku Blütenkirsche Japan Sponge.

The sponge feels just like what behind Tackiness Chop 2.

Did anyone try PimplePark EPOS??

Yes I tried it in 1.9. I thought that it was similar to Marder II. Has nice feeling and lots of control. My FH/inverted style is all-round but with more looping than chopping. It wasn't quite lively enough for me for FH looping but very good for chopping. Would suit a more evenly balanced all-round style or defensive in the thinner sponges.

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2. S&T Black & White / Armstrong SH-I 1.8 / TSP Curl P3 Alpha R OX

It does seem to still be in the catalog:

https://www.butterfly.co.jp/products/rubber/

Iskandar