Experience with some other Loki rubbers - Arthur China, GTX Pro (inc)

[Grumms]

From alie?

Yes, Global Sport Store.

 

[lodro]

I'm starting to have doubts about Loki's QC standards now.

No doubt about it , Loki's QC completely sucks 😂

 

[Guruzz]

I ordered a new Telson 475 for next season but I received a 450, I did not even knew it was available.

View attachment 36933

I don't know what to do with this.

where did you buy it, I'm interested, I could buy it... I tried the teslon100 in 47.5, I liked it a lot on the fh but on the bh I found it not very hard and I was looking for the 45 but I didn't find it anyway between the black and the red there are differences, the black is harder despite a layer of falcon

 

[Grumms]

I ordered a Loki Telson Power blade. I'll try the 450 Telson on it.

 

[TT Lover]

I ordered a Loki Telson Power blade. I'll try the 450 Telson on it.

I'm also looking for 450 Telson, where did you buy it.

Thank you sir.
Best regards,

 

[Grumms]

Global Sport Store on Ali, but it's a mistake from the vendor. I had ordered a 475.

 

[Kupkake]

I got another LAC Pro and been testing it against normal LAC and for sure thd pro is a harder sponge, which is weird since they are both rated at 40deg by the manufacturer. Also the pro is less bouncy and less sensitive to spin, so much better for serve receive for me. This LAC pro is however about the same weight as normal LAC around 51-52g. But I have another pack of LAC pro and when I measured the full package that one is lighter by 5g. So when I get there I'm curious if it will be about 2-3g lighter cut.
So far I like the pro version better on outer carbon blades.

I'm really suprised you found LAC Pro to be harder than normal LAC. I have some friends who have read WeChat forums and talked to players in China and they said LAC Pro is supposed to be softer than LAC. Same topsheet, just softer and less dense sponge, hence the lighter weight. I've felt 2 sheets of LAC Pro and 3 sheets of LAC (orange package) and they were all pretty consistent in terms of weight and hardness, with LAC Pro being lighter and softer than LAC each time.

 

[Kupkake]

Did anyone try the colored LACs? Green purple etc with white sponge. Is it the same rubber? Why is it like half price? Confusing.

I tried LAC Purple and it was pretty bad to be honest, and that's coming from someone who thought H9 purple was pretty decent. Seemed like the same sponge from Rxton 3 Pink, which is quite hard in my experience, and the topsheet was basically non-tacky with lackluster grip. I didn't try playing with it for very long, but it just didnt seem to be good at anything other than hard flat hitting.

 

[lodro]

it just didnt seem to be good at anything other than hard flat hitting.

which unfortunately has to be said about many of Loki's rubbers. I still like my Rxton3Pro, after months of club play it is still sticky.
I found a blade I had not played with for a very long time and it featured a virtually new Rxton5 (first version) it was also still sticky. So i took it of the blade and gave it 3 good treatments with Sea-Moon. It curled up real nice and now it plays pretty much like the Rxton3Pro.

 

[Zwill]

I'm really suprised you found LAC Pro to be harder than normal LAC. I have some friends who have read WeChat forums and talked to players in China and they said LAC Pro is supposed to be softer than LAC. Same topsheet, just softer and less dense sponge, hence the lighter weight. I've felt 2 sheets of LAC Pro and 3 sheets of LAC (orange package) and they were all pretty consistent in terms of weight and hardness, with LAC Pro being lighter and softer than LAC each time.

One of my gripes with LAC is that the sponge is a crapshoot. The topsheet seems to be pretty consistent but the sponge can be heavy and soft and light and hard and any permutation in between depending what pack you open.

 

[ttarc]

Rxton 7 review in German (auto translated subtitles are okay). Reviewer has nearly 1900 TTR and likes the R7.

 

[TensorBackhand]

Rxton 7 review in German (auto translated subtitles are okay). Reviewer has nearly 1900 TTR and likes the R7.

Rxton 7 is pretty good after booster. But it doesn't really have the catapult and hardness of D09c. It's more like Rakza Z.

 

[Wakkibatty]

Rxton 7 is pretty good after booster. But it doesn't really have the catapult and hardness of D09c. It's more like Rakza Z.

Yeah boistingit makes sense. I've tried the R7 several times now. It's a great rubber for serving, but lacks hitting power away from the table.

After using R7 in games for quite a.while, I'm back on the R9 in 38 degrees, and the extra power is noticable.

 

[lodro]

Yeah boistingit makes sense. I've tried the R7 several times now. It's a great rubber for serving, but lacks hitting power away from the table.

This is interesting, the german boy in the video seems to do pretty well without boosting. He does say that he has to smack it a bit harder but that is as a comparison to the rubber he normally uses.

 

[Wakkibatty]

This is interesting, the german boy in the video seems to do pretty well without boosting. He does say that he has to smack it a bit harder but that is as a comparison to the rubber he normally uses.

It's a good rubber lodro, but it definitely has less regular speed than the R9. Frankly it feels only slightly faster to me (unboosted) than a regular R3Pro. It's not a slow rubber at all, but it's also a long, long way from having a tensor-like feel.

To my mind It's feels more like an all-round rubber. There's this mild, mushy 'hole' in its impact response that gives it a LOT of dwell and spin on lower speed shots, but can actively interfere with your top speed on all your high impact ones. It's almost like the top third of the sponge layer is either missing entirely, or is made of entirely different (lower) density material than the other two thirds. It is capable of very decent speed, but just like a regular H3, you *really* have to have good technique to get that speed out of it.

I went to a training session recently run by a bunch of young visiting provincial players from a Chinese University. I had a non-boosted R7 fitted on the FH side of my blade (I was testing a new blade prototype with it at the time). They were instructing me in power looping away from the table at one point, and one of the coaching players borrowed my blade to demonstrate his desired technique.

His first attempt at FH looping normally with the R7 blade only *just* cleared the net, at which point he actually paused and laughed at the rubber. All his subsequent shots went back to hitting the baseline, but he was also putting lots more oomph into each shot than he normally had to with his H3N... And he was only about eight feet behind the table at the time.

It's really not a *bad* rubber for the price frankly, but for looping away from the table you really do need to think about boosting it first, or transferring weight perfectly on every stroke, (or even better, doing both).

My weight transfer was a little off the mark at the time, so I was struggling a bit to loop away from the table with it, hence my coach's demonstration. On the plus side, the R7's lack of catapult (and that training session) were both handy in highlighting a technical FH fault I had recently developed, that my more powerful R9 set-up was both partially compensating for and effectively hiding from me. My FH got far stronger as a result of correcting the error, but highlighting technique issues is not really what your FH rubber is supposed to be used for, plus I still have to work hard to use the thing away from the table, even with better technique.

Think of it as being like a very poorly boosted regular pig-skin variety H3: in its un-boosted form, It's basically an all-round serving & short-game spin machine, that is best playing close to the table. Sure, you can loop with it away from the table just fine if you're young, strong and aggressive with brilliant technique... But at our age and playing level mate, why the hell would you bother?

You either boost the thing properly and take your FH to another level in the process, or else you switch to something else entirely. That way you can still use your right arm properly and walk around work without limping or wincing a lot the following day after a big match.

EDIT:

Interesting!

On re-watching the video, that gent is clearly getting *much* more speed out of his R7 than I do out of mine. His sponge also looks substantively different to the sponge on mine (mine is far more of the typical denser Chinese pig skin / cake sponge variety!).

Additionally I wouldn't describe the R7 as a hybrid at all! Just the opposite, it's tacky as hell. That's a lot like calling a H3 a hybrid IMO.

In all fairness to Loki, the R7 rubbers I've got were all purchased over a year ago. So maybe they have changed the rubber substantially since then (certainly going by that video, they're offering a much bigger range of rubber densities on the R7 now than they did when I bought mine).

(Or alternatively, maybe I just got a bum batch of rubbers and their previous QA issues are acting up again. 🙄 Which would be a shame frankly, as they'd made a lot of progress on that lately.)

 

[lodro]

It's a good rubber lodro, but it definitely has less regular speed than the R9. Frankly it feels only slightly faster to me (unboosted) than a regular R3Pro. It's not a slow rubber at all, but it's also a long, long way from having a tensor-like feel.

To my mind It's feels more like an all-round rubber. There's this mild, mushy 'hole' in its impact response that gives it a LOT of dwell and spin on lower speed shots, but can actively interfere with your top speed on all your high impact ones. It's almost like the top third of the sponge layer is either missing entirely, or is made of entirely different (lower) density material than the other two thirds. It is capable of very decent speed, but just like a regular H3, you *really* have to have good technique to get that speed out of it.

I went to a training session recently run by a bunch of young visiting provincial players from a Chinese University. I had a non-boosted R7 fitted on the FH side of my blade (I was testing a new blade prototype with it at the time). They were instructing me in power looping away from the table at one point, and one of the coaching players borrowed my blade to demonstrate his desired technique.

His first attempt at FH looping normally with the R7 blade only *just* cleared the net, at which point he actually paused and laughed at the rubber. All his subsequent shots went back to hitting the baseline, but he was also putting lots more oomph into each shot than he normally had to with his H3N... And he was only about eight feet behind the table at the time.

It's really not a *bad* rubber for the price frankly, but for looping away from the table you really do need to think about boosting it first, or transferring weight perfectly on every stroke, (or even better, doing both).

My weight transfer was a little off the mark at the time, so I was struggling a bit to loop away from the table with it, hence my coach's demonstration. On the plus side, the R7's lack of catapult (and that training session) were both handy in highlighting a technical FH fault I had recently developed, that my more powerful R9 set-up was both partially compensating for and effectively hiding from me. My FH got far stronger as a result of correcting the error, but highlighting technique issues is not really what your FH rubber is supposed to be used for, plus I still have to work hard to use the thing away from the table, even with better technique.

Think of it as being like a very poorly boosted regular pig-skin variety H3: in its un-boosted form, It's basically an all-round serving & short-game spin machine, that is best playing close to the table. Sure, you can loop with it away from the table just fine if you're young, strong and aggressive with brilliant technique... But at our age and playing level mate, why the hell would you bother?

You either boost the thing properly and take your FH to another level in the process, or else you switch to something else entirely. That way you can still use your right arm properly and walk around work without limping or wincing a lot the following day after a big match.

EDIT:

Interesting!

On re-watching the video, that gent is clearly getting *much* more speed out of his R7 than I do out of mine. His sponge also looks substantively different to the sponge on mine (mine is far more of the typical denser Chinese pig skin / cake sponge variety!).

Additionally I wouldn't describe the R7 as a hybrid at all! Just the opposite, it's tacky as hell. That's a lot like calling a H3 a hybrid IMO.

In all fairness to Loki, the R7 rubbers I've got were all purchased over a year ago. So maybe they have changed the rubber substantially since then (certainly going by that video, they're offering a much bigger range of rubber densities on the R7 now than they did when I bought mine).

(Or alternatively, maybe I just got a bum batch of rubbers and their previous QA issues are acting up again. 🙄 Which would be a shame frankly, as they'd made a lot of progress on that lately.)

Cheers mate, summing up : "best let it be" 😂

 

[K.K]

i would not read to much into this test, they are sponsored and clearly paid by some person that has an unofficial loki website and sell the rubbers for double/tripple the price on aliexpress in europe to make a dime out of it. loki official made an instagram post and called to avoid this website and that they not approve their methods

 

[jk1980]

These guys are a joke. First of they constantly mix up terms and simply deduct properties of the rubber by the size of the pores of the sponge and additionally they even had a video where they glued a rubber and used a roller to press onto the bladeface after glueing the rubber, with the handle being on top of the table risking either bending the blade or breaking it laterally. They are hacks. The rating they got has nothing to do with ther knowledge of material and they usually parrot marketing talk of the brand.

 

[chinacurious]

I wouldn't be quite as harsh, but I have to agree that the informational value of their videos is pretty limited.

 

[piligrim]

Is anybody can compare LAC to Double Fish Volant Phoenix?