DHS Hurricane Long 5 + T05 (FH) 2.1mm + Xiom Vega Europe (BH) 2.0mm

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I got back into table tennis about 6 months ago after nearly 20 years of absence from this sport. I had played for about one year when I was in Grade 7, and since then I have not really touched the sport.

I immediately got hooked up again and I feel like currently I'm in that phase of "wanting to try out all sorts of new blade and rubbers". I'm doing my best to not do that as it can get quite expensive. I have been playing with Andro Treiber Z + R47 (FH) 2.0mm + R42 (BH) 2.0mm during the last several months and have been quite pleased with it. However, with my birthday coming up, I decided to buy myself a new set up which is as stated in my title.

I was expecting this new set up to be noticeably faster and spinnier (at least on my FH) than my previous setup. However, I have played for about 2 hours so far and my initial impression is that this isn't the case. I probably need more time to really tell but I do feel slightly disappointed because I've done quite a bit of research prior to getting the new setup. The new set up is also noticeably heavier too. Another thing I noticed was that the sound it makes when I hit the ball (both FH and BH) is very dull compared to my old setup, which doesn't feel as satisfying. This may be due to thicker rubber.

I was hoping if anyone with more experiences can chime in to see if I should in fact be experiencing this, or perhaps I may have messed up when gluing the rubber or got a bad batch of rubbers/blade. Appreciate your opinions.
 
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Contrary to many reviews i personally find the HL5 NOT to be overly fast. In fact its quite slow (Slower than TB ALC /viscaria). At best its OFF or OFF- depending on your rubbers. What HL5 excels at is control and feel which makes it very easy to generate spin especially with a chinese stlye rubber. You can make up for speed by using more strength and hitting it harder and by taking advantage of the immense dwell time and brush the ball like mad to generate lots of topspin.

This is one of those blades where you have to put in alot of effort and energy for every quality shot. If you want the equipment to do all the work for you then you got the wrong blade. As a Cannon stlye loop player (like FZD), the HL5 greatly reduced my unforce errors as my natural instinct in the past was to kill loop every loop with all my strength without adjusting for variations in spin. The slower blade meant my shots mostly landed on the table.

Edit for clarity:
When i say speed/fast, i refer to how quick the ball leaves the blade. So fast blade=harder to properly brush the ball=harder to control. But this doesnt mean the shot u make will travel slowly to the opponent's side of the table.
 
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Hey Vik2000. Welcome to the forum.

It could be the case that the rubbers werent glued properly. Only way to know would be to reglue with another 1-2 layers on the rubbers and 1 layer on the blade. However the Vega europe can be a little bit under tension and shrink or become a little bit harder to reglue.

There could be another explanation for what you are noticing. The Andro Treiber Z (havent played this one of the treiber series so i can only guess) has a different construction, top layer (hinoki) and carbon (zylon). So this blade has a rather springy nature. Also your rubbers are a newer generation so they are a little faster and have more dynamic too them.

While the hurricane long 5 is indeed a fast blade, because of its fiber (arylate) and toplayer (limba) it got a less lively feeling to it compared to your treiber. you could say the blade got the potential but wants you to do the job. also the Tenergy is spin optimized with high throw that isnt as dynamic as the R47. The Vega Europe is really controlled. same Hardness as r42 but not as fast and dynamic.

also if your blade or overall setup feels (and maybe indeed is) heavier, it could also be that you play with a slower stroke and everything feels more dull.

Those are some aspects to think about. if you dont care about how the rubber ends up looking on your blade you could try the old rubbers on your new blade to see if it feels less dull. But in the end the setup you picked wants to be played a little different so to say.

Hope that helps.
 
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Treiber Z has Z fibers right below the surface plies. ML5 has arylate carbon layers next to the core ply. Usually, blades with composite plies closer to the surface will be faster than blades with composite plies closer to the core. With that said, ML5 isn't a slow blade by any means. To reach top speed of ML5 with T05, you have to swing much harder. The dull sound means you are not hitting the ball hard enough for the ball to dig into the plies of ML5.

If you want to have better sound, you have 2 options:
1. start hitting harder with your current set up
2. switch to a softer rubber than T05 (maybe the fx version)

Softer rubbers allow the ball to more easily dig into the blade, and you will hear the sharper sound produced by the wood (as opposed to the dull sound produced by the rubber).
 
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Thanks very much for your reply. They are extremely helpful and I think both of you made some very solid points. I definitely need to work harder on my form and do more work instead of expecting the blade/rubbers to do the job, although this is easier said than done.

I think it would've made the most sense if I put R47 and R42 on ML5 blade first just so that I can isolate the blade component only. Because everything is changed for the new setup, it's difficult for me to tell which piece has really made the difference.

What's interesting to me is that, I guess one cannot simply determine the speed of the blade simply based on its speed category. I know Treiber Z is rated as OFF and ML5 is rated as OFF+, but what it seems like because ML5's arylate layer is closer to the the core, it actually requires fuller stroke to unlock its potential power.
 
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That's interesting...

If that's true, that's quite disappointing. There are way too many marketing schemes among table tennis products that it baffles me why everything isn't standardized.

Also, if that's the case, wouldn't vendors selling these products disclose that? But when you go to one of their websites and if you filter by OFF+, it will show blades from every brand. DHS ML5 will be shown together with Butterfly Amultart, which is another OFF+ blade. Viscaria will be categorized as OFF.
 
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