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Nice get. Hope nobody gets in trouble. Interesting at many levels. One of them is that Stiga better do something soon considering they are a European company. Maybe they get by fine selling blades to their Chinese market. Maybe their newest rubbers will catch on but as things stand now...

Actually, to elaborate on this, we have structures in our skin that are specialized for detecting changing and short stimuli, known as Pacinian corpuscles and Meisner's corpuscles. In normal life, these things help us detect textures when we rub our hand over a surface (or when we make stone...

The OP's question is something I've given a lot of thought to. I actually have some qualifications to answer, because I am a physiologist, and my own research actually pertains to mechanical sensation by cells (although not the cutaneous receptors in the hand that hold the blade). Part of the...

Something about the way the ball-evoked vibrations are transferred to the hand gives people some sensation they interpret as "dwell", but which is in fact something else. The vibrations occur simultaneously at more than one frequency (same reason a violin sounds different from a flute even when...

Absolutely. Don't take it.

I agree sort of, except that I would stipulate one thing: The Chinese seamed balls are really bad still, and I hope that DHS makes fast progress in reverse engineering the Nittaku Premium. Clearly other environmental factors matter too.

With that said, for a flared ALC blade, in my mind it really is impossible to improve on the Viscaria. And ZJK has the kind of personality that seems like he is not going to be change just because his sponsor made a blade with his name on it! (Actually two ALC blades, the Blue Dragon one...

The picture of Vladi's blade certainly doesn't look like any Btfly ALC blade I have, but it could be that my monitor distorts color and I can't really be sure. I am interested that he uses MX-S on backhand. I can't tell what people see that makes it look boosted (I don't boost my MX-P, so...

Given that new rubbers like MX-P smell like booster from the factory, it is good that they have to use an instrument. I think ITTF should eliminate this stupid booster rule anyway (except for thickness, which they can readily measure). Bear in mind that ITTF only regulates topsheets, not sponge.

There is also a ZJK-ALC so he could use a blade with his name on it that is quite similar to a Viscaria and that does not use any sort of different technology at all (I have owned multiple copies of each and can attest to the similarity in how they play and the fact that they exist in exactly...

Follow the money.

I definitely think so but I don't have any hard scientific evidence. For me I don't think the effects are huge but I have glued so many times I think it is rare that I do it really badly. If you get air pockets where glue doesn't hold, or the glue comes off around perimeter, or if the glue...

Wturber at mytt also once recommended adding a trace amount of ammonia to Tearmender to slow the drying. Some TT glues clearly do that since I can smell the ammonia. Just another variable. From the photo you posted, it seemed like an excellent glue job. Better than I ever got with Tearmender...

After a ten year layoff Jim Butler walked into the club to play. He was somewhere between 1800-2000 that day. Two days later he comes back, that day he was about 2200. For about a week or two he mostly practices with me and a small group of other guys in the club who are in the 2000-2200...

No doubt. That is why we all come here. Just know that some stuff that one suspects might be really well understood is pretty much a black box, and oddly enough, this is one of those things.

Continuing. There are a lot of variables to control. Frequency of cleaning, how soon after play. Type of cloth or sponge. How many strokes and how hard you push the cloth or sponge against the rubber. Each cleaning method would need to be compared to some standard, such as distilled water...

A truly fact-based discussion would be based on an experiment n which rubbers were cleaned with different methods for a period of time, say 3 months. They would have the same playing time in the same room with the same player during those months. And we would need an objective measure of rubber...

Grip is interesting. You can do it either way. A coach here has been teaching me a serve return technique in which you hold loose until just an instant prior to contact, and then you tighten a bit. But only for return of short serves to FH, and indeed it is a spin killing technique.

Good penholders are often really good at varying spin when they block especially on their BH side. Often they add varying amounts of sidespin. You have to pay attention or you will misjudge. Ma Lin in his day was a master of that. Some of it also is timing, how early you take ball off the...

This may be Dyjas' brealthough. Dima did not play badly. And his forehand looked good.