OOAK Table Tennis Forum

OK, i'm pretty new to table tennis so please help me out. I came across many of this topics but I have no idea how can I tell if the rubber is hard or soft. People often talk about it but by looking at this link here how can I tell if the MX-P from tabletennis11 is hard or soft. https://www.tabletennis11.com/other_eng ... on-mx-p-50. If there any description anywhere that I missed it? Please advise. The MX-P is just one example, but there are many rubbers I came across and I don't see any where on the description saying weather is Hard or soft sponges at all but players are talking about it all the time and I have ideas.

MX-P 50 is very hard. 50 is here sponge hardness (the bigger number the harder). Regular MX-P is softer, but also relatively hard. Tibhar Evolution series from softer to harder: FX, EL, MX.

Thanks for the response, but in general how can you tell by just looking at the rubber. Is there anything on the description that would give a hint? Is there a number somewhere that would point that out?

Sandwich (sponged) rubbers almost all bear evaluation of hardness by Shore scale imprinted on their dust cover .
Be happy.

If it's a European brand there will be a number on the front, usually labelled "degrees" or "sponge hardness". The higher the number the harder the sponge. The one you linked to says "50 degrees", which is rock-hard. Same deal with Chinese or Japanese rubbers. The problem is.. they use different scales. Even the Chinese use different scales among themselves - DHS uses one scale, 729, Yinhe etc. use another.



In general - strange as it may seem - "softer" rubbers are actually faster, up to a point. Harder rubbers will feel deader, and slower. Unless you really hit the ball hard - you CAN get more speed out of harder sponge, but it takes proper strokes to do it. For this reason the harder sponged rubbers are sold as "professional" rubbers, though it doesn't mean they're unusable by beginners.

But especially if you're new to table tennis - it's not really worth worrying about. Get some $5 Chinese sheets (729, Yinhe Mercury 2 or Yinhe 9000, etc.) and they'll work just as well for you as all the expensive stuff.

Iskandar

Thanks for the info. Yep, very new to the game and want some soft that's why i'm asking. don't want put money to any hard rubbers. Now, it's clear that the degree is the measure of the soft and hardness. I will look for the number. Thanks again.

I usually ask the wife! lol

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Tsp Black Balsa 3.0 Tenergy 05 1.9 388d ox black

Soft isn't necessarily good for beginners. Hard would actually give you better control over the table (pushes, blocks). To give you some idea - one of the most commonly recommended rubbers for beginners around here is Yasaka Rakza 7. It's fairly soft - but it turns out it's quite fast. I let someone use my bat with Rakza 7 on it - he was used to Chinese rubbers (729, etc.) and he kept hitting the ball long. I then lent him another bat with some Chinese rubber on it, he found that a lot easier to control. The reason pros (especially Chinese ones) like hard rubber on the forehand is 1) it's slow for fine control to keep the ball short when playing over the table, and 2) they can develop enough power to hit the ball really, really hard, which is needed to get speed out of the hard sponge.

Iskandar

Softer rubber requires and supports the topspin loop game. While spiny loop style is progressive it is not easy to adopt it for the amateur players unless they spend most of their tennis time with a professional coach for a several years. Total loop style is also very demanding for physical fitness.

My road to table tennis started with hard Chinese rubbers after more then 10 years of regular weekly practice my FH strokes are still rather flat. I do not play Chinese hard rubber anymore but I still cannot play with very soft eurojap FH rubbers. So I disagree that the softer rubber the easier it to play.