Donic Li Ping KiTex

Hi All!

I have been waiting for ages to try this blade. I also would like to tell you, that I only used this blade with T64 and EL-P for 3 hours, so this is not my final opinion, I will update the post!

The box was redesigned and it look nice. The blade is a fine craftmanship, sanded down edges, even butterfly does not sand down the edges of the blade. The handle is a chinese style hangle, no matter which type you choose, it will be small. Even smaller than the ZJK or Shiwen blade, but it is comfortable for me. The surface of the blade is totally flat, the veeners of the blade have even thickness all across the whole body. The design of the blade is solid, but great. The shape of the head is waterdrop shaped, so the upper part is a bit narrower, than the regular Butterfly shape, lenght is the same 158-159 mm. The blade is head heavy, which I personally prefer. The composite layers in the blade are next to the kiri core, dark grey in colour. Texalium is a glass fiber, which is covered with a very thin layer of aluminium, and the grey colour is because of additional graphite colouring. This material is weaker than the regular carbon and resonates more. Middle layer of the blade is ayous/samba/abachi, which is nice. Top veener is kiso-hinoki (200 years old), which is perfectly sanded, no visible pores or uneven surfaces, where you glue would stick in.

So the blade was designed to loop, but also have a bit more power. It is marked OFF-/OFF by the manufacturer, which I think is reasonable. This blade resonates, which gives the optimal feedback from the contact of the ball. The blade is predictable in every situation. Sweet spot is suprisingly large, I would say that the 1,5 cm margain of the head is not usable. When looping the arc of the ball is med/low, but this I will try with other rubbers. Also the feeling of the loop is very pleasant, no resonations. On direct flat hits the blade resonates on low tempo, but this resonance fades when hitting harder. Some say there is no spin in this blade, which I would not support. With the rubbers mentioned above I was able to produce very spinny balls, more spinnier, than a Liu Shiwen blade. This was also tested and confirmed by my girlfriend, who also tested it, and currently uses a Liu Shiwen blade with the same setup. The arc of the loop is less pronounced, but the spin is there with both rubbers, very aggressive and very flat loops. I did like dropshots due to the heavier head and the rubbers.

Today I go to thest this setup a bit more and then I will glue MXP and M2 on it (my fav. setup) to see what this blade does with higher throw rubbers.

At this point I would recommend this blade to allwood blade lovers who want speed and control around 80-85 grams. This is a controlled to aggressive looper blade which has the power for smashing. To be honest it definetly feels like Jun Mizutani ZLC, with a bit more power and better feeling in flat contacts.

As you can discern out of the pros insertion above the Li Ping KiTex is a blade which provides very good control in passive play for a OFF+ blade due to it's relatively soft wood-composition along with it's compared to simple Carbon or Aramid Carbon soft Texalium layers.
The only problem for me is that this blade isn't really something for amateur players who practice 'only' three times or less a week in my opinion as with this blade you have to have a solid technique to produce heavy spin especially in terms of the third ball attack because with that blade I have the feeling that if you were not playing with a soft rubber, which semi-pro or pro players mostly don't use as they use medium-hard or hard rubbers like Tenergys, it is very hard to produce spin but if you want to play fast topspins all the time this blade is a very good choice.