OOAK Table Tennis Forum

I'm a Fairly new player, mostly playing with friends and my brother but we take it seriously and I'm getting alright, hoping to join a club or something soon. I've got a Palio (maybe CJ8000 rubbers) which about two years ago was recommended as the best for beginners. I did really like it but its getting on a bit and my birthday is coming up and I've decided I might treat myself.

Problem is it can be pretty overwhelming and I'm novice enough to not really know my style (although I think I'm mostly balanced but maybe skewed slightly toward offensive)
I think I've decided on this:
https://www.customtabletennis.co.uk/pro ... light-70g/

but the rubbers and specifically sponges are a bit confusing for me. I'm half tempted to get the popular (and cheaper) friendship 279 rubbers probably the same on both sides, I'm not quite advanced enough to be specialising, having said that they do seem like really good all round rubbers.
I've seen the ITTF now allows certain blue rubbers and I must admit I've been very tempted but the Spinlord Irbis one so figured it maybe get one of those and then the friendship one for the black backhand
I'm a little concerned that I'm delving too far into the unknown and should stick to the basics especially as when it comes to the sponges I pretty much know nothing.
I'm after any advice any of you lovely people want to give.

Essentially I just want someone to tell me that What I'm thinking of getting is fine and I'm not going to ruin an expensive blade buy being an idiot, (also give me some clues on what kind of sponges I want. I worry that the ones that come with the rubbers will be too much or detrimental) but if anyone has some suitable recommendations for a relative beginner I'd be more than happy to hear them.

Thank you so so much. xxx

I know a few people who have those Woodnut blades from Custom Table Tennis - they like them very much. I've had a feel of them and a knock with them, and they're really nicely made and lovely to use. Good choice.

If you're going to buy one of them anyway, I would give Steve at Custom Table Tennis a call - he'll give you good advice, and answer all your questions. He'll probably recommend one of the mid-level Xiom rubbers.

Basically any allround rubber will be fine.

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Yasaka Sweden Classic | 802 OX | C8 OX
Check out my blog - LordCope's Latest Learning Log - 10+ years of accumulate mistakes!

Thank you. I’ll see if I can get hold of him.

Has anyone ever used the spinlord rubbers?

It is so hard to say without seeing you play. The blade looks pretty nice and relatively expensive. If I was recommending a 729 rubber to a new player I would recommend the 729 FX supersoft in max sponge. For Chinese rubbers get max sponge unless you are experienced enough to know you want something else. For a general all around set up yasaka Rakza 7 in 2.0 sponge is a good place to start imo.

If you use the "search" function, you should be able to pull up threads with the word spinlord (but that will include a lot of pimples) but also you can search for eg "spinlord marder". That way you can read any past stuff, and then append your questions to the thread or create a new one if you don't find what you're looking for.

I've not used Spinlord inverted rubbers but a number of folk on here have. They're probably fine. I don't know that you'd necessarily get any specific benefit from using them over against any other vendor - I don't perceive them to be a specialist in inverted rubbers.

I use a Spinlord rubber on my BH and I have used a few on my FH - I think they're pretty good and decent value.

Custom Table Tennis sell Spinlord (https://www.customtabletennis.co.uk/pro ... nufacturer[421]) so if you fancied trying them on your Woodnut blade, you could source your rubbers from them too.

_________________
Yasaka Sweden Classic | 802 OX | C8 OX
Check out my blog - LordCope's Latest Learning Log - 10+ years of accumulate mistakes!