OOAK Table Tennis Forum

I'm reasonably familiar with the KTL (used to also be LKT) Pro XT/XP line (T=tacky, P=non-tacky), which comes in a variety of sponges (including red, green, silver and gold dragons) - they're slow-ish and lightweight, more control than normal. I'm also familiar with Golden Star (don't buy it.. ). But I've not tried any of the Rapid line - there seem to be four - Soft, Sound, Speed and Power. I wonder what these are like. Soft, Speed and Power seem self-explanatory (at least, within the group), but Sound? Apparently the only reason for its existence is it's got this mysterious "click" that Tensoroids are supposed to have. They're available in 2.0mm and 2.3mm sponge. They're all $10-13 rubbers (depending on source). Ratings given by KTL:

110-010 Speed: Speed 9, Spin 10, Control 8
110-012 Soft: Speed 8, Spin 9, Control 10
110-011 Sound: Speed 9, Spin 8, Control 8

Power seems to be unavailable through AliExpress (but it's in the LARC - 110-014).

What prompted this post? Someone remarked that "KTL Rapid Soft was too slow for counter-driving", which I find hard to believe. The only thing I've found that's too slow for counter-driving was Reactor Ckylin, maybe I should get a sheet and find out. Still, it's not a $5 rubber, so maybe not.. Maybe I should get a sheet of Sound and a sheet of Soft, put them on a blade and see if I can hear the "click" when I flip the bat around to use Sound..

Iskandar

KTL Rapid Speed is a slow and low spin rubber. The throw is low.
I prefer hard sponged rubbers and played with Speed some years ago but I cannot tolerate its stone hardness nowadays comparing to MX-S.

Soft/Sound are very similar to XP except their sponges are not sensitive to speed glue by design.

A bit late to this party but since so little feedback has been given I'll add a little.

Personally I like Rapid Speed, great price/quality. It's a bit slow but I like it that way and technique gives me al the speed I require. I don't completely agree with the low throw trajectory and IMHO the hardness isn't that bad... but the rubber does require a few hours of gameplay before it's actually usable.

Now I haven't played with Sound but one of my mates has played Sound and liked aswell for price/quality even for advanced gameplay. He nowadays plays a different budget rubber but has nothing but love for Sound. So I let him try my Rapid Speed and he said it felt pretty similar but as far as he could recal it seemed slower (but that could be the equipment setup as a whole) than Sound and less direct. Both rubbers in his opinion were for active play while he would rather play Sound on the backhand for block/smash/flick abilities but not for spin while he would play speed more for allround ability that also includes spinny loops on the forhand. Both were great for serve but Sound seemed less for looping. Both had ok serve receive similar to something like Sriver/markV as to how it reacts to incomming spin.

_________________
~ Puttin' pressure on you kids like I'm a soccer mom. ~

I used Rapid soft 2-3 years ago and found it soft, slow and spinny. Good for a controlled spin game and taming fast low dwell carbon blades. The high dwell made it excellent for lifting backspin and doing over the table flicks. I have now moved on to a more aggressive polyball game on the FH so am using much faster rubbers like Rasanter R42 and World no. 1 with booster glue.

What's "World no. 1"?

Iskandar

made by Tuttle

https://www.customtabletennis.co.uk/pro ... ory-tuned/

Works well with Xiom booster glue

Ah.. Don't recall seeing this before:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32979493292.html

I was wondering if this was the Japanese Tuttle or the Chinese one (or was it Kokutaku that had a Japanese incarnation). Looks Chinese to me. The rounded corners are unusual.



Iskandar

Tuttle actually owns Kokutaku and they pretend that that's a China-Japan joint venture, while they make Chinese stuff.

Unlike other chinese manufacturers, they do a lot of rubber with some kind of ESN feeling.

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