Butterfly Garaydia ALC

Hi All,

I played with this blade for about 2.5 years now and thought i'd share my impressions of it.
It is by the far the fastest blade I have ever played with and i suspect that will be true for most people. Compared to a viscaria I would say its about 20 to 30% faster easily. However I wouldn't say that it is uncontrollable, as I found it it super easy to block with and on the forehand side topspin would generally go where I intended them to go. In general opening up on the forehand or countering is pretty straight forward as the blade feels very stable and when the contact is good it the resulting shot is fast enough to either lead to a direct point or an easy follow up shot in most cases.

Additionally, while the feeling/ feedback isn't great its not as bad as it initially seems. When i first got the blade it seemed very dull and muted, however nowadays I am quite conformable touching balls short and it performs well in general over the table play considering the speed. That being said, its night and day when compared to pretty much any wooden blade i have played with and even compared other ALC blades the touch is lacking. This also comes into play when playing opening loops against backspin and sometimes flicking, where i frequently miss due to the pure speed of the blade.

All in all I think its a great blade for players that play relatively flat and have a big forehand with a passive backhand. I've personally found myself to be almost addicted to the feeling of playing a good forehand with the blade, which is probably the primary reason for me sticking with the blade for so long along whit a nice backhand punch. However I suspect that my terrible backhand opening loop has much to do with the speed of the blade since i'm much better at it whit slower blades and have therefore decided to switch to a slower alc blade with the aim of relying less on power and speed on more on spin.

This was my first blade and it had a really nice feel to it and I was able to give strong shots while having that control I used Tenergy 05 and Tenergy 80 for my forehand and backhand rubbers. The feeling was really great because I felt like I had a lot of control especially in my loops and my backhand block. Overall this is a good blade

Hello Everyone!

A video of the Unboxing:


I bought this blade at Hamada Takkyu, in Namba @ Osaka, Japan. The heaviest they had was 87.5g. I added Nittaku Lead Tape on the handle plus TSP Hand Grip wrap. The Handle is Very thin for me, so this works perfectly with the added Grip tape.

I use Hurricane 8 on the FH and Mizuno GF 48T for my BH. At first, started to use Tibhar EL-S for my BH and found it too mushy for my taste. (Med Soft Rubber + Soft Blade = Mushy Mushy imo) Switching to Mizuno 48T was great because its a Hard rubber.

Ill give a short summary:
Using this blade for a month, i found out that:
This blade excels on Imparting great spin on loops.
Has a Small Sweet spot(Imho)(Just a nudge higher than an all wood blade)
Great for Flicks and over the table play
Using Chinese Rubber when driving, i needed to hit the ball as if i was doing a flat drive with a brushing motion at the end.
As for Chopping, There are better blades out there but you still can generate heaps of underspin.
Low Throw blade, Excellent for Blocking
As for pushing, give it that extra push because most backspin balls will go to the net.
The Hinoki did its job well by providing a soft feel but what i disliked about it was the lack of feed back(vibration) that i receive from every stroke.(Thats arylate carbon for yah)
Superb Control, around off- in speed

*i might add more content in the future, for any questions, dont hesitate to ask.

What’s going on guys, this is my review on the Garaydia ALC which has been released in 2015 and designed for the plastic ball. The ALC is a top of the line blade by Butterfly from the new Garaydia series.

The blade is 5 ply and has a really nice smooth finish and also has a holographic lense on the underside of the handle to stop counterfeit products. Watch the video review below, the rubbers used on the blade are the Butterfly Tenergy 05.


Overview

One characteristic we first noticed about this blades is how thick it is in comparison to other traditional carbon blades such as the Jun Mizutani Super ZLC notice how much thicker the wood/core is on the Garaydia in the image below. To be precise the Garaydia ALC blade has a thickness of 6.9mm, whereas the Mizutani Super ZLC has a thickness of 6mm. This core thickness helps promote speed in the blade which has been tailored for the 40+ ball.



The ALC blade uses Japanese hinoki wood which is designed to keep the soft touch maintaining the control of the fast blade. The Carbon used is Arylate Carbon.

The blade weighs 86 grams.



Speed

The Garaydia ALC comes packed with control and its speed is very noticeable. The crisp feeling is very evident with this blade as expected with the arylate Carbon and I would not recommend this blade for beginners. The ALC has a low trajectory and felt slightly faster than a Timo Boll ALC.

When playing 3 point forehands playing at maximum pace and speed preciseness in my technique was required due to the low arc of the blade. Once I had adjusted I could really produce a lot of speed in my strokes something which I really liked.

Spin

When playing against backspin with the ALC the large sweetspot and great dwell helped to counteract the spin and gave us high amounts of accuracy. This helps produce lots of rotation on the ball. If you have tried a Timo Boll or a Zhang Jike ALC the dwell felt quite similar.

Flicks and aggressive shots

This blade really excelled when flicking and playing counter topspins and shots close to the table, due to the low throw generated this helped in this department.

Conclusion

The new Garaydia ALC blade has definitely been developed for the new plastic balls due to its sheer speed and thicker core. One noticeable feature you get with this blades is it’s the crisp feeling and the ability to produce a quality shot with minimal action.

The ALC has a soft feeling when brushing the ball and playing against spin. If you were to choose a blade from the Garaydia series, this one would feel the most controllable as it has a touch more dwell time than the ZLC and a lot more dwell than the T5000. I would not recommend this blade for someone until they are competent in their shot quality and consistency due to the responsiveness of the blade. An advanced top spin attacker would really benefit and like this blade for playing top spin shots from mid distance and close to the table. When going for speed the ball has a low, direct trajectory, and when playing with spin you get good arc on the ball from the blades dwell.