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This is just to reserve a thread for this review. This is a classy long pip - I've just tried it out. I'll give it a second run in and post a review end of next week.

It is far more likely to be banned than Juic Leggy thats for sure, because for 1.5mm sponge there is an aweful lot of reverse spin. By that I mean there shouldn't be any at all! Yeah I like it.

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Tibhar Grass D.techs OX | Donic BigSlam 2.0mm .
Re-Impact Medusa (balsa / 1-ply cherry wood)
Frictionless strokes | Attacking pip strokes | Greggy's advice | Bollsbrother | Sebastian Sauer . . . . . .

Ok made a bit more progess on this and will compare the final review to 755 1.5mm sponge.

There is a considerable contrast between the two and I'm not sure by the convention that 1.5mm sponge moves outside the lp effect. Alot depends on the flexibility of the pips and the hardness of the sponge. 755 pips are obviously large flat and pretty rigid sitting on hard, dense sponge. This is a sharp contrast to Frustration. Frustration appears to be like a less sticky version of Leggy or at least a sticky pip with a smoother tip. The sponge on it is medium. Frustration is very springy to play with. It is an attacking rubber and faces control problems in reversing spin, but good control at inverting spin or doing floats(lifts).

It looks like 755 is very solid at reversing spin but weaker at manipulating it. It looks to be able to handle incoming spin very well, but is poorer at attacking, or rather very poor at manipulating the incoming spin and returning inverted spin/ float(lift). In other words it is behaving like frictionless rubber. My my question at this point is thats ok and it looks pretty good but why have 1.5mm sponge for a rubber which is better at defending than attacking? I guess that it makes it medium fast (not very fast) for a pip.

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Tibhar Grass D.techs OX | Donic BigSlam 2.0mm .
Re-Impact Medusa (balsa / 1-ply cherry wood)
Frictionless strokes | Attacking pip strokes | Greggy's advice | Bollsbrother | Sebastian Sauer . . . . . .

Yes I agree, the 755 does not do much more than reverse the spin and does not allow you do manipulate with spin much. I found this to be the case for a 0.6mm sponge. I think it's designed to be used for hitting throungh the ball, sort of short pip style. The edges of the pips still offered some friction, which help a little...

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Ok I don't have much prior experience with attacking pips and little experience with sponge so the following is working progress. Normally I'll play with frictionless pips and twiddle and bh loop using inverted.

Checking the rubber out the rubber it has medium soft pips on a medium firm sponge (1.5mm). The pip tips are a grey colour and they appear to be pretty 'frictionless', although the stems are reasonably sticky but not as sticky as C&F3 or Leggy. Pips are horizontally arrange medium diameter - smaller than 755 and larger than Leggy. I did a fair few tests against 755 (1.5mm) and it initially appeared that whilst Frustration was good at 'inversing' spin and offered good control, it lacked control in reversing spin unlike 755 which was extremely good at reversing spin. 755 had a resembalance of a frictionless pip.

On the table things were different. Both were offered great control at attacking - I'm not sure which was better at landing the attack against various spins, perhaps 755. Anyway attacking was easy. Manipulating the topspin return was also very easy with Frustration, you could also play a variety of frictionless shots, sidespin swipe - pretty good, chop/ chop block - ok, lifts/floats - very good. Drop shots were difficult but not impossible.
Playing 755 sidespin against topspin - I dunno but on some returns it seemed to produced more deviating effects - all other strokes pretty good.

PUNCH BLOCK
The surprise of the rubber was the punch block:
This is a key stroke in attacking long pips - although it is also used in frictionless pips. It is the equivalent to the frictionless pip 'drop shot' which is one of the strongest strokes in amateur tt because it produces slow heavily underspun balls (against a loop) which bounce twice. It is a very difficult stroke to deal with. A punch block is a 'hard push' which will produce an underspun ball travelling at speed. Needless to say it is a difficult stroke to deal with. Frustration excelled at this stroke - it produced a pretty good underspun ball which was pretty fast. The technique and the blade angle had to be spot on, however there was no doubting the outcome. 755 seemed to perform poorly at this stroke you would have thought the increased reverse spin would have produced a strongly underspun ball against topspin - in fact it was weak. Sure the stroke was easier to control with 755 but it wasn't effective. For such a key stroke in attacking long pips this is a major weakness of 755 and a key strength of Frustration.

The other stroke both rubbers could produce was a forehand sidespin loop. This was fantastic. Frustration excelled at this again because the ball nestled into the pips gave great dwell time and would produce a sidespin arc. The throwing angle is much lower than with inverted but its easy to land the stroke and its highly controllable. The importance of this is that most players I face have trouble against heavy sidespin - it does two things forces the opponent out of position on the far forehand or else arcs into their body at a approx 45o angle on the bh (for a right handed player), or a variant being to drop unpredictably either side of the cross over point. The ability to mimic this stroke but now with a reversed top or backspin has to be useful and should cause havoc against a good opponent.

The last feature of this rubber to deal with is the topspin punch block against incoming topspin. Well so far I can shift between a floated punch block and underspun one - although the disguise is not great at present but I'm working on it. I'm not sure whether 1.5mm sponge will produce sufficient topspin (from a punch block not a loop) to do this, but with a fresh cleaned (non-dusty) pip sheet it could do and might simply be technique.

In short this is a good pip. The transition from frictionless to attacking pip is not trivial but there are strong parallels. Frustration in summary is working progress but it looks good.

Phew got through this review without mentioning Carl Prean once.....errh.. until now!

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Tibhar Grass D.techs OX | Donic BigSlam 2.0mm .
Re-Impact Medusa (balsa / 1-ply cherry wood)
Frictionless strokes | Attacking pip strokes | Greggy's advice | Bollsbrother | Sebastian Sauer . . . . . .

Is part of you post missing here?

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OOAK Table Tennis Shop | Re-Impact Blades | Butterfly Table Tennis bats
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Think you read a draft whilst 'in edit mode'. You're just too quick Haggisv!

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Tibhar Grass D.techs OX | Donic BigSlam 2.0mm .
Re-Impact Medusa (balsa / 1-ply cherry wood)
Frictionless strokes | Attacking pip strokes | Greggy's advice | Bollsbrother | Sebastian Sauer . . . . . .

The more I play this rubber the more I like it.

It has sticky sides, which are as sticky as any Chinese pip, however the tips are slightly grippy.

This contrast between the tips and the sides is really interesting and that is how it is achieving its deviating effects. The tips are not frictionless but they have far less friction than the stalks. Which sets it apart from Chinese pips.

What does this do? Thats simple the amount of reverse spin you are delivering is governed by how hard you hit the shot in a dramatic way. If you hit hard and flat then the ball is floated (punch block), if you take the ball off the bounce in a more controlled manner (punch block) the ball carries reverse spin, if you hit it with an angled bat it'll carry topspin. Very effective eh?

Thus you can generate some 'frictionless' style shots using short placement and still retain attacking capability.

I need to look at chopping in more detail, but in truth I don't really know how to 'strategically' chop, I've seen some of Greg's vids and can more or less see whats going on but how to combine that with this rubber I dunno.

In summary this is a quality pip. It is not quite Donic Allegator which has sticky sides and frictionless tips, its probably better. I'll check out the 1mm version next and see how it compares.

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Tibhar Grass D.techs OX | Donic BigSlam 2.0mm .
Re-Impact Medusa (balsa / 1-ply cherry wood)
Frictionless strokes | Attacking pip strokes | Greggy's advice | Bollsbrother | Sebastian Sauer . . . . . .

Thats; good feedback Mathias! It does sound like a very versatile LP.

Regarding your punch block, did you find any chinese LP which is as effective at this? I think I need to start practicing this shot. I have tried it a few times, but it did not seem effective...so perhaps I'm using the wrong LP, or I need to go to OX...

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OOAK Table Tennis Shop | Re-Impact Blades | Butterfly Table Tennis bats
Setup1: Re-Impact Smart, Viper OX, Victas VS 401 Setup2: Re-Impact Barath, Dtecs OX, TSP Triple Spin Chop 1.0mm Setup3: Re-Impact Dark Knight, Hellfire OX, 999 Turbo
Recent Articles: Butterfly Tenergy Alternatives | Tenergy Rubbers Compared | Re-Impact User Guide

Chinese pips: I'll let you know soon how they compare - I've got 955 on order although here in the UK one sheet costs the equivalent of $24 Aus dollars !!! (crazy mark up) - the only one I used to date and know about is 755 (1.5mm). Not sure if that counts but it didn't work too well.

Juic Leggy OX works well (very well), I presume C&F3 OX which I've got but not tried works. The issue is what happens when sponge is added and generally I suspect most tacky pips will return a float ball, 755 (1.5mm) certainly did. By 'working' I mean it will deliver reverse spin against really topspin (could be backspin) on a fairly hard 'push' performed using a more or less open bat face, as you'd do with a block.

The second issue is disguising a topspin shot as a punch block and thats harder, but not too hard. Disguising it properly is very hard.

With chopping its easy to vary the ball placement on a large defensive blade, or vary the angle of the stroke, or the amount of 'forward movement' you put into the stroke and its difficult for an opponent to see exactly what you've done, with punch blocking its much easier for an opponent to see whats happening. However, by using a wide range of spins the opponent can get overwhelmed on the punch block. The other thing is that because the ball is moving at speed there is a lower margin for error for the opponents return.

I badly need sponge .... too many OXs... lol!

Going to try Spintech - unfortunately its only sold in 1.5mm sponge version here (yuk), anyway it'll give me an idea....

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Tibhar Grass D.techs OX | Donic BigSlam 2.0mm .
Re-Impact Medusa (balsa / 1-ply cherry wood)
Frictionless strokes | Attacking pip strokes | Greggy's advice | Bollsbrother | Sebastian Sauer . . . . . .

hah hah, I've got too many LP wioth sponges... need to get some OX to try...

We've justy got some 955 OX in, so I'm hoping to give that a try as well...

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OOAK Table Tennis Shop | Re-Impact Blades | Butterfly Table Tennis bats
Setup1: Re-Impact Smart, Viper OX, Victas VS 401 Setup2: Re-Impact Barath, Dtecs OX, TSP Triple Spin Chop 1.0mm Setup3: Re-Impact Dark Knight, Hellfire OX, 999 Turbo
Recent Articles: Butterfly Tenergy Alternatives | Tenergy Rubbers Compared | Re-Impact User Guide

Ok here's a turn up for the books. I've just got 'Milky Way' 955.

Basically its the same thing as Hallmark Frustration.

The tip surface is different (Hallmark's is grey) but the level of tackiness appears to be the same. All other stuff looks the same viz. spacing, tackiness of stem, colour of sponge, feel of sponge, colour of sponge. 955 pips might be fractionally harder I dunno difficult to tell 1.5mm vs. 1mm.

It may play differently but I'd be surprised. Frustration is supposed to be made in Japan, 'Milky Way' (Galaxy) is Chinese.

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Tibhar Grass D.techs OX | Donic BigSlam 2.0mm .
Re-Impact Medusa (balsa / 1-ply cherry wood)
Frictionless strokes | Attacking pip strokes | Greggy's advice | Bollsbrother | Sebastian Sauer . . . . . .

Hmm, I've had a sheet of Milkyway 955 .6mm in the cupboard for 4-5m but never got around to cutting it and giving it a try. I keep going through "I'm going to be a chopper" phases but then my next over the table attacking game gives me such a rush I forget I was on a mission! (Till I see my next video of Chen Weixing, or watch Paul P chop someone to death!)

Maybe a pip that was good for semi-Carl Prean attacking and also at chopping away from the table is what I need. That way I could learn the chopping game on the side without changing rubbers/bats. Maybe I've had that pip in my cupboard all this time?

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Chopping is virtually all I used the do with this rubber, I think it's awesome for chopping. It wasn't until some of my other LP friends tried it, and told me how good they thought it was for attacking/blocking...when I decided I should try this more...

I suspect the spin reversal of the 955 would not be nearly as good as the frustration, but the 955 is not doubt better at many other things...

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OOAK Table Tennis Shop | Re-Impact Blades | Butterfly Table Tennis bats
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Recent Articles: Butterfly Tenergy Alternatives | Tenergy Rubbers Compared | Re-Impact User Guide

Perhaps this question belongs in another thread, but which chinese pips have the most spin reveral? C8?

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I dunno but its a good question.