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Calibra LT Sound is soft high speed/high spin rubber suitable for agggressive offensive players who want to be able to both spin the ball and hit it HARD.

It works best on modern composite OFF or higher baldes that are solid, stiff and hopefully heavy.

Calibra Sound has most of the oomph of it brother LT, but the softer sponge allows MUCH better performance on strokes that are not all out or 80% power shots. You can actually make an opening loop and then power loop away to your hearts content. You wont leave the same vapor trail as you do with LT, but the pace is plenty enough. What you get is the ability to easily spin and control the ball way better than LT. Therefore, a balanced offensive player can make good use of this rubber over LT. You will not be able to hit as flat, hit as fast, pulverize the ball on powerloops or smashes, flat flip the ball, nor will you be able to do laundry using Calibra Sound, but you sure will have a lot of control on the setup shots that require a 50% - 70% stroke... You never got that with LT, margin of error was too small.

There are comprimizes on everything, but this one gives you middle control and acceptable top end over LT, which was only a beast in the power hungry strokes.

This rubber is a lot more suitable for more players than LT. You wont get the WOW !!! Blow your mind FH putaways, but you still can finish the point using it. th availability of other stroke effectivnes is well worth the sacrifice in some of the top end speed.

Bananna flips are easier, soft topspin defense, opening topspins, control looping, passing shots, counter-topspins where you are looking for spin with speed level just below super-sonic. If you wanna hear the sonic boom on your power shots, get Calibra LT. If you want to get it by your opponent with a rally and a setup shot or two, get Calibra Sound. You wont get eth super glued up glue sound, but the allround performance is many times better than the harder sponge LT version

Calibra LT is a medium hard sponged modern offensive rubber that excells in fast rallies requiring a rubber with the fastest speed to pressure or finish points. It performs best on stiff, solid, composite blades. This is the FH rubber of choice for those who want to hammer their opponents into submission.

Read that first sentence again and if you fail to comprehend it, read it again. If you are looking for a mushy Euro/Japanese rubber for your BH, go take a hike up Mt Everest and come back. You are barking up the wrong tree.

That said, Calibra LT still has shiny performance in some other departments you wouldn't attribute it for. The short receive is much better than you would think for a rocket rubber, it is actually not so spin reactive on the touch shots, so that is a plus for someone's game flexibility. Flat flips and flip kills are also suprisingly easier with this rubber over a more conventional modern rubber. You wont be bananna flipping like a monkey though, just about any softer modern rubber will perform that task 10X better.

What you buy Calibra LT for is to get into and hopefully Dominate those topspin to topspin exchanges from distance. If you already have a powerful stroke, AND you got you an OFF or better solid composite blade, your setup might need to be registered as a weapon of mass destruction. Countertopsins must simply be experienced with such a blade to truely understand the damage you can cause to either pressure your opponet with overwhelming pace or finish the point outright. Calibra LT on a composite blade that is on the solid heavy side will take your opponents medium fast or fast loop, shoot it back at him with more pace and good spin while you laugh like Woody Woodpecker. You might also have a good (Perhaps a fake heavy) No-spin serve that gets your opponent to return it a tad higher than he wanted, or it comes back long. In this case, you sic your LT dog on that ball and it is point over By-ya. Flat hits and smashes close to table are monster power and pace, just what some close to table attackers want. This could be a hitters dream, but the modern macho man player usually wants to powerloop, which LT does on the money.

You can open heavy and slow, but the margin for error is very thin, just about every other modern rubber will outperform Calibra LT in this aspect.

You have to ask yourself some questions as a player to figure out what you do most and select equipment that suits that the best. If you are mostly bumping back a serve and then going right into aggressive fast topspins, than Calibra LT will serve you well. If you are a balanced allround flexible attacking player, you will find many better options than Calibra LT.

When you could speed glue, NO rubber out there would soak up the glue like this thing. It was king of the hill hands down world standard.

Now that we don't glue up, it is an entirely different animal... Kinda like a really weak one with no fangs.

This rubber will perform (hard to say that with a straight face) well on any blade you slap it on. It will, if you clean it and maintain it, last WAY longer than any Japanese rubber you ever owned. Speed is SLOW medium. Gears is a word this rubber pioneered back in the day and it holds true. Compared to modern rubbers, you will at the end of the day feel very disappointed in the top end of this, it doesn't have much, however, that allows you to hit harder and if you know how to do that, you can lay the smack down and still land it.

Sriver is an allround control rubber that will do every stroke well, but not exceptional. The mushy soft sponge is for those who want a more forgiving rubber (usually BH side) that will still topspin with control and allow some error, yet still land it. There is still a place in modern TT for such a category of rubber and BTY innovated a legeend in this category. 40 years of use in the TT world will attest to it.

Many pundits will recommend this rubber on an ALL+ blade and call it a day and true, that will get the job done for the beginning player who wants a controllable rubber to alow him to grow the fundamentals.

This rubber is best used with a player with TOUCH who values the ability to VARY the spin with control and placement. Such a player will boss points without hearing the Villiage people sing "Macho Man".

MX-P is the power weapon of choice for a player who likes to fast loop open or counter loop from mid-distance with authority.

MX-P is best used on a heavy, solid, stiff OFF or faster class blade, preferable a composite balde. It will feel "Wrong", "Not Lively" and "Ackward" on a lighter, flexy looping blade.

Hard sponge means you get a little extra leeway on soft touch returns and it is less spin sensitive than many modern rubbers on those slow shots.

The basic serve, push drill is similar to a modern rubber, but on flips, you want a little more solid contact. That holds true for any shot that is short of big swing or a countershot. Opening topspin vs underspin is possible, AND it is heavy, but you gotta know how to operate your blade and your body or it is epic fail city.

When you get into a rally where you are either hitting the ball, countering the ball, fast looping the ball, re-looping the ball from a step off the table, or smashing... you will greatly enjoy this rubber. You get an extra burst of pace and spin on your solid hit re-loop in a rally, unique to MX-P. If you are a T05 user with a composite blade, you won't have to change your stroke much for this. Softer struck balls will come off much lower and with much less spin. it is real difficult to assign a spin rating that makes sense, becuase you really only get the extreme spin on a well struck shot vs incoming topspin. That shot will carry rocket pace and insane topspin, so will your opening putaway fast loopkill vs a long underspin ball, like a long push off your serve. You can still make a heavy slow opener, but WHY with this rubber? It is less profit.

Serve/smashers will crave this on an OFF+ blade. Fast loopers and those who like to park a step or two away from the table and let 'er BANG in topspin to topspin rallies will absolutely pee in their pants waiting for the glue to dry to get a crack at operating MX-P on a solid fast blade.

To understand this shorter review, I ask readers to take a look at my review of Tibhar Aurus.

Evolution series is from soft to hard FX-P, EL-P, MX-P.

Evolution plays like a nice, juicy sheet of Aurus with a little more feel and softness. It matches up with just about any bat you slap it on. I use it for FH on some bats, i usually use Aurus. FX-P does not play as soft as its rating, just like Aurus feel softer than its hard sponge rating. FX-P works best of flexy looping blades. It is simply a dream match there. it will still work on stiffer, faster blades, but MX-P is a dream on those heavy, solid composite blades.

The best attribute of this rubber is the spin you generate in topsin rallies. Hands down, your attacking topspins are more troublesome to the opponent. You are not gunna hit it through him unless it is an easy chance, but wow, the laws of physics you can bend using this rubber is worth it. If you have a player who is pressured and somewhat troubled by your topsins in rallies, slap this dog on your bat and go hunt. You will be suddenly much more to handle in a topspin rally. Opponent will position himself just a tad too far back and then it is OVER. Spin will drop your loops like there is a rock inside the ball and they tend to fall shorter than your opponent is judging them to be.

All the rest of the strokes have good feel and control like Aurus does, but there is a extra "spin" gear on medium and full swings you wont get out of Aurus on semi brush contact. Your serves, pushes, flips, and connecting shots have similar control, but once you do a shot that uses sponge, it is ON.

Soft topspin defense is amazingly a strength. Easy to do over Aurus. Any counter-topspin rally where you are controlling the ball is easier. You wont get Calibra-LT pace outta this rubber with average swing power, but the control and spin allow you to hit it harder and still alnd it on your fast loops. Rubber plays best on soft topspin defense, medium loops, and opening loops that are loaded.

Aurus is truly a modern Swiss Army Knife for players on the warpath in TT battle.

Aurus is a modern version of an offensive control rubber. In the older days, we had really slow, but controlable rubbers that had gears (Think Sriver) and in modern times, we demand a lot more performance from our rubbers, because we are not supposed to speedglue or tune our rubber. Therefore, we demand glued performance straight fromm the package. Since there is no TRUE glued rubber right out of the package, we of course have comprimises. Aurus will not give you 100% glue feel or glue spin. It WILL, howver, give you a lot of gears and spin and control at a medium fast control able pace on most shots with a decent top end.

Speed and spin ratings are difficult to assign numbers to and the same player may use a different stroke in a different situation with the same rubber and the speed/spin will be all different. It is difficult for different reviewers to all think the same way and use the same convention the same way consistently, so everyone should take it all with a grain of salt.

That is what is good about TTD Dan's Video reviews is that he tests the performance of the rubber/blade in several dynamic common situations for offensive players, such as opening vs underspin, re-looping, counter hit, smash, serve, loop vs dead ball, slow heavy topspin, fast loop, flick just to name almost a common dozen.

Aurus has a very hard sponge, but a very supple, grippy topspheet that will give you the impression of a much softer rubber. Overall, it is not as fast as the fastest rubbers, but it has more gears accross the range and much more control in manyu of them. Remember, to get absoulute top end speed, you give something up. Aurus is not as reactive to spin as some rubbers and combined with the elastic topsheet and hard sponge, you have suprisingly good control on slow tocuh shots in the short game and that same topsheet helps you in faster passive shots like a push deep at opponent.

It is stable on flat hits (but not absolute super high end pace) and smashes. On counterloops, it will grab the ball and give it back with what you give it, the rubber is very linear there. On a fast loop vs a push, you get some catapult added to your shot to go along with a boatload of spin. Varying the spin is easier with Aurus over the average rubber.

If you play everyday for hours at a time, this rubber will not let you down. It lasts WAY longer than the favored Tenergy rubbers we all love. I usually get 300+ hours out of it. many modern rubbers make you want to rip off the rubber after 100-150 hours. Many dont even make it that long. This rubber can be found at half the cost of top end expensive modern rubbers (if you look for a sale) and the price performance ratio of this rubber is among the best you will find.

Der_Echte

These balls are certainly not the worst of the various plastic balls I've tried, however they are slightly disappointing in terms of durability and roundness in my opinion. After training with them for a week or so they rarely lasted without breaking, especially when you miss-timed the ball and struck the top of the blade they would break immediately. These balls do have a seam and play very differently to the seamless balls. Quite often these balls were certainly not up to the hardness you would expect for a 3* ball, the seam is hard but the rest of the outside of them tended to be quite soft.

Having said that the have a better flight and feeling than some of the other brands of plastic ball such as Joola. Overall these balls are not fantastic, but I believe the production of the plastic balls will only improve with time and the quality will get better as companies make improvements.

I switched to this rubber from normal 05 on my backhand it saw immediate improvements. Its easy to control and is more forgiving than standard 05. It's great from every distance but is particularly good attacking over the table. I will stick with this rubber for my backhandfrom now on.

this rubber has great feeling and is good for blocking and controlling but does lack the speed edge to get through opponents. i found this to be a very good backhand rubber due to its spiny nature and controllable. unlike the vega pro this rubber is very forgiving and allows a little margin for mistiming and such like.

This rubber requires impeccable timing for you to be in complete control of it as it is very unforgiving. very quick and spiny rubber but is no good for the passive or all-round player. you need to be a solid topspin attacker for this rubber to work for you. one very good thing with this rubber is that it is very good with serving and is very easy to generate spin with them. as well as this it does have a prolonged life and does last a long time without dropping off. what i did find is that the edges are very brittle.

This blade has an incredible feel that allows you to feel the ball totally on the bad and has impeccable control without losing speed. All aspects of the game are easily done with this blade and I find this blade very forgiving as it has a large sweet spot. The only con with this blade is that with tenergy in can sometimes be top heavy.

This blade is well suited for those who seek for powerful topspin shots and dominating rallies. It blocks incoming topspin shots with great speed and control as if you're a wall, but I couldn't find this consistency in playing aggressive shots. For me overall it was too stiff and not controllable enough but I can imagine that in the right hands this could be a deadly weapon.

I've tried this rubber on both backhand and forehand. It's well suited for close to mid-range looping with enough speed and spin. Basic backspin pushes and flicks are fine as well. The only problem here is the control; sometimes it's hard to find the correct angle and arc, topspins flying over or into the net. Same with blocking.

I have this robot and I've really enjoyed to practice with it. It's really easy to set up and the balls goes back to the machine automatically thanks to the "net-barriers". The Newgy Robo-Pong 2050 has a great variety of training programs and you can also make your own ones if you plug it to a computer. I don't think the price is that bad either.

But what could be better with this robot?
-You have to either choose topspin OR underspin (OR sidespin). What I mean with this is that you can set up the machine only to 1 position (top-,under- or sidespin) before you start the program. Meaning that you can't for example have it serve you first 1 short underspin and after that 1 long topspin. The maching can though put short and long balls in same programs.
- Another slightly bad thing is that when you program it to serve you underspin, the spin is WAY too heavy. It's like playing against a defender who pimple chops your topspin and you have to hit from that ball next. In a way this is good (if you want this kind of training) but I find it a bit disturbing that I can't regulate the amount of spin the machine produces.

But as said, I have really liked this robot and it can surely help you develop your game. The (rather) low price makes this certain robot a good choice if you are thinking of buying a table tennis robot.

I tested Stiga Airoc M rubber a few weeks ago. I played only about 15 mins with it but here is how it felt:

The sponge felt quite soft. That was my first thought. Compared to Tenergy 05 (that I've been playing for several years with now) it was a big difference. The rubber had good spin and control but I put the speed both to "pros" and "cons". It felt like I had to hit really hard to get the same speed as with Tenergy 05 but to be honest it wasn't really that bad.

From what I've heard from my friend they have also really liked the rubber and said it's the best one Stiga has made so far. I think it fits quite well with poly ball. The rubber is certainly worth a try if you want to try something new and a bit different than Tenergys. I'm thinking of starting to play with this rubber.

I use this rubber on my forehand it's does everything I ask of it and can create heavy top spin ( with medium/low throw ) but has lots of control and spin for the short game and serves. I have two blades set up with this on my forehand and 425 on my back hand. Blades, Jolla wing passion fast and Rossskopf emotion fast. This rubber works best with a stiffer blade, I have tried it on all-round blades, its just not as good power/spin wise . Its not as quite spiny as 05 but has more control . This is just my opinion, as are all reviews.

I used this rubber for a period of time as a replacement for tenergy 05. It definitely has the speed but not the grip to match. I enjoyed using the rubber but tenergy was just that bit better so I went back. It wasn't very durable, only lasted a few weeks when I was playing full time.

I trained with these balls for a few weeks and have used them in one competition. They are the best plastic ball I have used so far. There is still issues surrounding the ball. They break far more often and the balls are not always consistent in a pack. They 'fly' much better than the other plastic balls I have played with though. So I will continue to use them until a better alternative comes along.

These shoes are excellent in all departments. I have been using them for 4-5 months now and have had no issues with grip. They are very comfortable due to the asics gel that is in the sole of the shoe. You can wear them for hours and not want to take them off. If the durability is anything like the previous Energyforce shoes I have owned I will still be wearing them for a few years.

There is however one big drawback to buying these shoes and that is the price. They are ridiculously pricey! If you only play table tennis occasionally and are not playing several times a week you don't need these shoes. I bought these shoes as I am a full time coach and wear them almost everyday. I have to get my moneys worth some how.

The Boll spirit is a classic blade and will be for years to come.

The reason for it's popularity is that any style of player can use it and get success from it. It has great control for a carbon blade, better than a lot of the faster wood blades. You can get the speed you need easily and never disappoints.

It's my first pick every time.

lgreggs