This blade is not very well known or talked about online, probably if it were from butterfly or branded with some pro name it would sell like hotcakes.
I stumbled upon it a bit by luck, some famous young players where signed by Tibhar and they were playing eye catching table tennis, they are the Lebrun Brothers. When I researched a bit more I found that one of them (Alexis) played with Boll ALC and the other (Felix) with innerforce (ZLC i think) but when they got signed For Tibhar they had to change equipment and they choose Shang Kun AC.
So far so good but I wasn’t completely sold on it, so lurked around on online forums, watched ttplanet21 video review on YouTube and thought, what the hell, I’ll get one and see for myself.
I’ve played table tennis for around 15/20 years, and used 5ply blades (Tibhar power 40 an old model), 7ply (Tibhar Samsonov Force Pro Black Edition), carbon blades (Primorac Carbon, Zhang Jike ALC, Viscaria, Donic Waldner WC 89, Timo Boll ZLC, DHS301, Nuytinck ZC, Donic Original True Carbon) some where mine and some from colleagues.
Anyway, when I first tried Shang Kun AC, I immediately felt an amazing stability, control and exceptional dwell time when training with it.
I was able to block much more consistently, the attack of the third ball and when serve receiving was so easy and fluid, at the same time I was able to let the ball much shorter when receiving serves. Everything felt like a whole new world coming from what I was used to. With a medium to high arc it is very safe to play aggressively.
Forehand or backhand both easy to loop and manage a great placement in the table, with great power when needed.
In competitive matches and tournaments where sometimes the pressure take the best of some players, I became a much better player because it gave me confidence, consistency and the ability to play faster balls or spinier ones, receive short, push long with better quality, everything how one thinks it should be, but often can’t really do, when feeling the pressure of important matches.
So, i can only recommend it to everyone that want to have a better control all around, a soft touch, still keeping enough power to finish any point
I prefer Donic rounder handle in the ST version of Donic True Carbon or Waldner 89 WC.