OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Hey, 

I am new and hope I'm posting in the right spot.

I'm an intermediate player looking to put together my first customer bat after using a Palio 2 Legend of the last few years. I've been overwhelmed by the amount of choice with respect to blades, rubbers and sponges and would like to make an informed choice about constructing a bat that suits my style.

I would describe my style as follows: an offensive forehand that also like spin and good control; a defensive backhand that likes to chop and negate spin with high control.

My budget is circa £120. I have been warned not to go for extremely fast rubber or blade as I won't have the control to keep it on the table.   

I am thinking then an allround bat with an offensive and defensive rubber. 

My friend uses DH 360 rubbers on both sides but his game is different to mine in that he is more defensive and tricky, whereas I like to attack and smash when the opportunity presents. 

Many thanks in advance!

I guess we get an average of one of these every week...

I suppose if you want something "defensive" this falls into the realm of the combination racket - i.e. something with inverted rubber on one side, and long pips on the other. With a slow-ish oversized (usually unusually expensive) blade. And this forum is the right place because there are a lot of combination racket players here. Maybe someone can suggest a good beginner/trial setup for this - I can't, since I don't play with one. The best I can come up with would be a Sanwei M8 with a sheet of long pips (HUGE subject all in itself) on one side and maybe something like Rakza 7 or Yinhe Mercury II on the other side. Mind you, switching to long pips is a long-term project - in the short term you'll find it very difficult to control. A number of folks I play against regularly switched to long pips a couple years back (thanks, Rob.. ) and they still haven't figured it out yet - they miss a lot of shots, while the rest of us have gotten used to playing against them...

Incidentally, GBP120 is a HUGE budget - you should be able to get something for a fraction of that. Unless you buy one of those expensive Japanese defensive blades with the four letter acronyms (VKMO, etc.).

Iskandar