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It could be a japanese sponge - the quality is good enough and it doesn't look exactly like any chinese sponge I've seen recently. It feels pretty quick once you overcome the tack. It's quite heavy though - 76.46g uncut, which is 10g heavier than a sheet of uncut P7.

Very different to Rakza. This is made in China, semi-tacky top, black sponge (at least on the black sheet). The quality of my sheet was very high, but it's quite expensive for a Chinese rubber. Only had a 5 minute knock with it so far so hard to give much detail at the moment, but it seemed...

Ask Cole if he will put a low value on the package for you. If you go with approx $20, that will be below the customs limit and you won't get charged import duty. If not, it's quite likely it will get stopped. Around 20% of my deliveries slip through, and the rest get intercepted by the feds.

Finally. Although I was hoping you'd sell it to me for $40 without ever trying it out.

This is a bit OT, but since you're the OP I hope you can FM (forgive me). What made BD work for me was the balance of the 38 degree sheet - topsheet not too tacky, sponge not too hard, etc. The first 38s were just perfect for me - supernatural. But then more recent batches labelled up as 38...

True, when the fibre is next to the core it helps a lot. I'm sticking with my WSC for now, but often wonder what an ALC version of it would be like. I should give the IF-ALC a try I suppose, but I'm irrationally anti-Butterfly these days. Just saying the words "Big" and "Dipper" are triggers...

I still love the JRE - great blade. I wonder if sticking ALC in there would result in too much damping and end up with a bad feel, but it could still be amazing. The Nexy Arirang is a hinoki/ALC 5+2 blade and had good feel, so probably nothing to worry about.

Balls! More ball news at least. Butterfly's 3* Weener ball has been approved and has appeared on the ITTF's list today, and is called: Butterfly G40+ *** (Plastic with seam)

Ah, the new Donic Whitefire. Can't wait to give this a try.

ZJK is in trouble. 3-0 down.

With tacky rubber, I find that the sponge hardness only makes a noticeable difference when driving reasonably hard. When brush looping I can't feel much difference at all. When driving through the ball the softer ones feel a bit slower to me. A traditional chinese style power looper (3rd ball...

Yup, correct. Xiom built a reputation up first before adding more "premium" stuff to their range. And they also had a flair for design with unusual touches - you can still see that today with their mad packaging for their seamless balls, and including grinding sticks with their blades. Adidas...

Xiom's early approach to equipment was almost the same as Adidas - German ESN rubbers, blades made by 3rd parties. Their business model was much better though, and they did a good job of making their equipment feel unique and distinct from the other stuff on the market (black sponges on the...

Well, this wasn't actually Adidas - The Big German Monster. This was Greenmaster Fitness, who purchased a licence to use the Adidas brand. So prepare to be more saddened - this was a pretty small company as it turns out. http://www.green-fitness.de/index.php?id=2

I wish I'd spent as long on the table as I had buying stuff to try out. I'd be a much better player by now. The inconsistent approach to labeling doesn't help. In olden days, when it was all fields around here, all tensors used to have the Tensor logo on them. Then that stopped happening...

Also, I should add, there are some ESN rubbers which don't have the Tensor thing built-in. These are still "Made in Germany", but are marketed as modern classics - Xiom Musa, Adidas R-Classic, Joola Zack. So non-tensor ESN. But these are the minority of ESN offerings.

This is wrong, in a pedantic sort of way. Tensor is a trademark held by ESN, so only rubbers made by them can be "Tensors", and so only stuff labelled as Made In Germany can be Tensors (TM) by definition. People tend to conflate "tension effect" rubbers with the name Tensor though, so this is...

P7's packet and rubber topsheet both say "Made in Germany". The sponge has the give-away ESN coding on the back. It looks just like many other tensors to me. You would have to go some way to convince me otherwise. The easiest way would be to show me which other German manufacturer (other...

This is a good question. Are Adidas pulling the plug on Greenhouse, or on all of their TT stuff (which includes tables, shoes, premade bats etc).

Wrong. P3, P5, P7, Tenzone, Tenzone SF were all tensors, made by ESN.