Yasaka Rakza 7 Soft

I have been using Rakza 7 soft for more than a year. I do not know why but some batches are good and some are bad. I used them for my forehand as I want to control my loop. The good batches gave me lot of control, accuracy and suit my game well. The bad batches were really bad! At times they felt hard like a brick, sorry, and my opponents told me my loop had no power. I think quality control of this rubber is terrible, especially when I took advantage of buying 4 for 3 price from Tabletennis11. Another thing I notice is when I tried to glue the 2nd time the rubber curved a lot. It seemed it was pre-tuned with some kind of booster! Not sure if this is correct but I do not like pre-tuned rubber. I now switch to tensor rubbers as they are more consistent in quality and regluing is not an issue.

As Usual I was living my life happily until my latest sheet of 729 563 wore down. However my Mark V was still alive. My coach said that pips weren’t very good and recommend me a better, more faster rubber. And that was Rakza 7 Soft. So the next session I decided to buy and use it. At first I hated it because it was heavy. However I quickly realised it’s potential. This rubber was so much faster and spinneir than that of my 563. I kept using it and enjoyed it. Then I started to struggle after a while it started to become less and less controllable. I got so tired of over hitting that I just went back to 563. However Until it started getting really uncontrollable it was a great rubber.

An absolutely excellent backhand rubber (and forehand if you like a light setup and soft feel with tons of spin). The best I know.

It's an old rubber so it has the old style thicker topsheet. But in this case it's one incredible topsheet. It's bulletproof in terms of durability, the longest lasting rubber other than the xiom vegas of the same generation and chinese sticky rubbers, and also incredibly grippy, biting into the ball and spinning the shit out of it. You can very easily feel how it bites into the ball with every shot which is an excellent feeling, also giving you a ton of control over placement.

It's a very light rubber as well, weighing about 40 grams cut

yasaka rakza 7 soft gives good speed and spin,i use it on fh on my friendship 729 two speed carbon ply

1 year ago i played with this rubber on my FH
because it was my first year i could not play verry well with it
the first 6 months my loops where verry good but after that i could not create the spin in my loops as before.
i think the rubber is great for players with a very fast gameplay and who like looping.

This is a review of the Yasaka Rakza 7 Soft rubber in the color red, max sponge.


Blade: Stiga Hybrid Wood penhold


Initial observations:
Top quality topsheet.
Soft springy sponge in the color white.
Weight is avarage. Not as heavy as chinese rubbers.


Throw:
The Rakza 7 Soft I would say has a medium to low throw. Lower than chinese rubbers like the H3 Neo and TG2 Neo, lower than the Rakza 7 but slightly higher than Stiga Boost XT.
Compared to Rakza 7 the sponge is "bouncy" and the throw gets a boost. The throw length is perfect for my forehand game, feels really "safe". The springy feel does not suit my bachand game, but I will try to give it more time.


Speed:
Not a fast rubber, however the sponge provides bounce enough to balance the spin and is a big part of the rubbers exelent control.
This rubber is about as fast as the H3 neo was on my blade, but for different reasons. The H3's tacky topsheet needs a huge effort from you to generate speed, so does this rubber.
As a forehand rubber, the speed and bounce could be better. Perhaps the R7Soft would benefit from a softer blade, just like the H3 Neo did. Will update the review once this is tested. (Not hapening soon! )

[edit] After a few weeks I glued this rubber on an old Banda JO Waldner blade and this blade suits the Rakza rubbers much better. The speed was increased noticably! [/edit]

Spin:
Good amount of spin thanks to the top quality of the topsheet. The topsheet is a little tacky, it picks up a small amout of dust but not much. Easy to clean.


Control:
I love the control of this rubber.
The balance between speed and spin is really good.
Way more control than Stiga Boost XT making my game slower but more consistant.


Value:
Great value for your money.

It's a very spinny rubber with a lot of feeling. Only sometimes it feels quite soft when you hit hard.