This is a great piece of content and what I find interesting is that you mention that for hard tacky rubbers you prefer koto/spruce rather than limba/ayous. What's nice about this is that you are more of the FZD school and if you look at Wang Chuqin / Ma long then that's more my school and why I prefer the softer more flexible limba with ayous combo instead of the crispier, harder/stiffer, bouncier koto + spruce
I wasn't always in that "school"
Although the last blades that I used with 38 mm balls and speed glue were heavy Persson Powerplays with tacky rubbers on FH
When I started to play again some years ago I used a Tibhar Lebesson, tried my Powerplays again and also lot of other blades (and still do
) to find the right combination of feeling and speed/performance characteristics with the 40 mm ABS balls. Especially since I focused a lot on improving my backhand (inspired by FZD). YEOs were the intermediate step to Viscaria-type blades that I use now.
People often don't think about that so it's good to mention it. Both setups can have hard tacky rubbers on FH and tensor like or hybrids on BH, and both work great, but will produce different looper play styles, matter of preference I think.
Somewhat an acquired taste I would guess. I know that I can get more spin out of an all-wood blade or for that matter typical inner-carbon blade with limba outer plies compared to outer-carbon or hardwood blades but I like and use this "extra" speed from the blade on BH a lot. Could write more but this post is already a lot OT
I have not tried the avalox500/Hadraw 5 so how does it play in your opinion
@ttarc ? Like a slower viscaria in a way? Or totally different despite the use of koto as outer? I always wanted to try Hadraw but never had the chance so far haha...
I tried a Hadraw 5 briefly in a Butterfly store and I do not know how the older blades (SK, VK, VR and some more) in that series played. Otherwise I found it to be quite similar to other blades of this construction. Crisper than typical all-wood blades with limba top plies, quite catapulty and bouncy. This can help when using slower, linear rubbers like H3 or can be too much when using bouncy tensor rubbers. In short: Not as crisp as a Viscaria nor as some hardwood blades (e.g. YEO, Rosewood 5) and not as linear (and of course not as fast as a Viscaria).
Btw. this non-linearity is not the same that I experienced with my Butterfly Falcima (koto, koto, kiri, koto, koto). The Falcima speeds up a lot when hitting/looping hard (balsa like) but produces less spin even compared to outer-carbon blades.
