Victas: Xegna and Xegna Spin offensive rubbers

[tzifos]

New rubbers from Victas, made in China, and tacky

With the XEGNA series, VICTAS builds on its many years of experience in developing high-grip offensive rubbers.

XEGNA SPIN is the harder version and combines the maximum grip of the newly developed Chinese top sheet with the tremendous power of an open-pore 52.5° offensive sponge. This hardness and dynamic performance are designed for aggressive offensive players who require this energy and explosiveness for their attacking game. The tacky top sheet produces exceptional spin potential, enables a wide variety of spin variations, and impresses with high precision and stability in all attacking situations.

XEGNA combines the extreme grip of the newly developed Chinese top sheet with the dynamics of a modern 47.5° offensive sponge. This sponge hardness provides a balanced playing feel and offers stability in passive play while maintaining strong power in offensive situations. The highly grippy top sheet generates enormous spin potential in topspin rallies and opens up versatile options for a variable and dangerous serve-and-return game.

Anyone got a hand on these?

 

[Gtsnake]

Is this "tacky" enough to pick up a ball? Or is it a phantom tacky like Dignics? Every time the manufacturers say tacky it's not even close to a Chinese rubber.

 

[Syyynd]

Is this "tacky" enough to pick up a ball? Or is it a phantom tacky like Dignics? Every time the manufacturers say tacky it's not even close to a Chinese rubber.

From the reviews it seem to be somewhat tacky, not majorly tacky. You can make up your own mind, I'm attaching a timestamped video review of a group trying the rubber Xegna, they give the lifting test a few shots with mixed results(keep in mind this is a freshly opened rubber, timestamp 1:55 if the stamp doesnt work automatically).

 

[Gtsnake]

Hmmm, that's not bad. It picked it up pretty good. Didn't stay very long but at least it was able to pick it up from the table. I might have to give it a try.

 

[Lazer]

Anymore reports on these?

Cheers
L-zr

 

[KM1976]

Is this "tacky" enough to pick up a ball? Or is it a phantom tacky like Dignics? Every time the manufacturers say tacky it's not even close to a Chinese rubber.

Are you mentioning 'Sticky' or 'Tacky'? I am a noob, but what I understand, tacky means to have a capability to impart more spin on the ball while brushing. This tackiness is different from rubbers which offer only mechanical spin and thus the rotation on the ball whether forward (topspin) or backwards (underspin) is considerably more in a hand of skilled player.

 

[Lazer]

Are you mentioning 'Sticky' or 'Tacky'? I am a noob, but what I understand, tacky means to have a capability to impart more spin on the ball while brushing. This tackiness is different from rubbers which offer only mechanical spin and thus the rotation on the ball whether forward (topspin) or backwards (underspin) is considerably more in a hand of skilled player.

Sticky and tacky is the same thing, the ball sticks to the top surface. Tacky just s little bit , sticky is more. The technical term is tacky.

The more tacky a rubber is the less you need to dig into the sponge to induce spin.
Virtually necessary for serving with a really hard rubber…

Cheers
L-zr

 

[KM1976]

Sticky and tacky is the same thing, the ball sticks to the top surface. Tacky just s little bit , sticky is more. The technical term is tacky.

The more tacky a rubber is the less you need to dig into the sponge to induce spin.
Virtually necessary for serving with a really hard rubber…

Cheers
L-z

I won't agree to that, since these are two different terms. If a rubber can be less or more tacky and less or more sticky then these are two different attributes. I believe rubbers like NUZN or Dignics 05 are tacky but not sticky.

 

[NextLevel]

I won't agree to that, since these are two different terms. If a rubber can be less or more tacky and less or more sticky then these are two different attributes. I believe rubbers like NUZN or Dignics 05 are tacky but not sticky.

Not good to debate words too strongly as they are tools for communication but usually grippy is mechanical and tacky is sticky, but i have heard people intend meanings like you do as well, where tacky is very grippy and sticky is really sticky.

 

[golden_son]

Not good to debate words too strongly as they are tools for communication but usually grippy is mechanical and tacky is sticky, but i have heard people intend meanings like you do as well, where tacky is very grippy and sticky is really sticky.

My reading is the same as yours, but I think it's a semantic debate at least partially tied to English being used as a common second language. It's certainly not worth any amount of heated argument over, but it helps to have a common understanding of certain words that are repeatedly used in the context of our shared conversation (i.e. table tennis stuff).

By the dictionary definition, tacky means "slightly sticky," such as almost-dry TT glue. Grippy means having good traction or high friction, like road tires. If we extrapolate these definitions to TT rubbers, technically even the "stickiest" of Chinese rubbers are really only "tacky"—they aren't going to adhere to a piece of paper, or your skin, or anything other than a TT ball for a few seconds really. But since there are demonstrably different degrees of tackiness to rubbers, it helps to have a third term to describe the spectrum. Thus: Completely non-sticky rubbers that rely on friction—e.g. your Tenergies and classic Euro/Japanese rubbers—are grippy. Somewhat sticky rubbers are tacky; and very tacky rubbers are sticky. Where the line is between tacky and sticky is definitely subjective, though. Personally I think it's fair to use them interchangeably, especially since we collectively tend to add adverbs like "a little" / "somewhat" / "very" anyway.

 

[andzejgolot]

I still dont know anything about rubber

 

[KM1976]

Not good to debate words too strongly as they are tools for communication but usually grippy is mechanical and tacky is sticky, but i have heard people intend meanings like you do as well, where tacky is very grippy and sticky is really sticky.

Agreed. However, take an example of badminton racket over grips. You can easily find a tacky over grip which is slip resistant and offers a better hold on the racket, however, it is not sticky. So my understanding is tacky means enhanced friction capabilities and sticky means to hold the ball.
However, if the meaning of tacky changes between sports for example, tacky means one thing in badminton and entirely other thing in TT then I am sorry, I didn't understood it in first place.

 

[netdriver]

unfortunate naming, not going to lie

i dont want to say "oh im using the Victas Smegma" if someone in my club hits me up and asks what rubbers im using

 

[ajtatosmano2]

It's pretty cheap here, around 38 usd. Same as a provincial Hurricane

 

[kapahoo]

unfortunate naming, not going to lie

i dont want to say "oh im using the Victas Smegma" if someone in my club hits me up and asks what rubbers im using

Settles the ”sticky” debate though…

 

[jonol]

Mostly I'm curious how these compare to V15 Sticky and Sticky Soft.

Almost seems like they've just rebranded those.

 

[andzejgolot]

Mostly I'm curious how these compare to V15 Sticky and Sticky Soft.

Almost seems like they've just rebranded those.

IT looks like rebranded softer k1 pro and h8-80

 

[Fragaal]

any new reviews about xegna spin?

 

[Archosaurus]

Agreed. However, take an example of badminton racket over grips. You can easily find a tacky over grip which is slip resistant and offers a better hold on the racket, however, it is not sticky. So my understanding is tacky means enhanced friction capabilities and sticky means to hold the ball.
However, if the meaning of tacky changes between sports for example, tacky means one thing in badminton and entirely other thing in TT then I am sorry, I didn't understood it in first place.

"Tackiness" is adhesion.
In a performance sense it means the transverse load sensitivity curve is very nonlinear at low loads, being infinite mu at zero normal load, and decreasing at higher normal load.
You don't need to sink the ball into the sponge as deeply because the immensely high mu makes up for the low contact area and you end up with a higher tractive force despite the high pressure.

729 developed it for table tennis rubbers because the hard, inflexible sponges they made were not delivering sufficient contact area at lower stroke forces.
The downside is that it will act a bit like a preload and reduce the speed of the ball by that force amount. It can be significant enough because the ball is so light and doesn't require high force to accelerate.

Of course TT balls are very light, so such an adhesion can hold them up even if it's very weak.
It's dynamic and reduces or increases over time based on the external forces and also internal forces.
It has a mechanical and a chemical component, in TT rubbers most likely largely mechanical due to the cold temperatures involved.

The chemical component is partly sticky as well and will leave material behind; think of slick racing tires. Maybe table tennis rubbers do this as well, but I have not observed balls being rubbered in at all, so it must be very slight if there is any. I know car racing compounds need to get closer to 100c surface temperature for that to happen and table tennis rubbers probably don't get to that high of a temperature expect maybe flash heating in a point right on the center of the contact patch.
Table tennis rubber compounds are softer than tire compounds, so their ideal temperatures will be lower, but I would be surprised if it's under 80c.

"Stickiness" is more like a glue, where the adhesion acts more like a preload and won't dramatically change until you go over the preload amount.