Timo Boll Interview: About 80% of pro's are using illegal rackets

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Look. This video may be a parody but it has more real information than most forum members seem to know:


As far as banning pips:


I can't see any real reason for banning the safe boosters or junk rubber. But if someone can give a good valid reason for either, I will be open to listening.

Invalid reasons, will be seen for what they are.

I also see no reason for restricting pros to standardized equipment. I feel they should be able to use whatever they want.

Most of the rules banning equipment seems to be for the profit of the ITTF and the TT companies rather than for the good of the sport.


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Hi everybody,
the topic is very interesting. Sorry for being analytical and maybe philosophical, but ...


I think the main question is where the confusion is coming from? I mean IMO the basic and inherent rules of the game should do the job and there should be as little regulation as possible - because they are never good and generally tend to be abused.


Why the confusion? Because there are two forces "pushing" the game and they are in opposition to each other, moreover there is nothing, no element that would make the situation stable.


One force is the ITTF (or more generally any table tennis tournament organizer). The "organizer" wants to attract as many spectators as possible (spectators at the arena, media attraction etc.) The organizer naturally would like the game to be attractive to someone watching it - longer rallies, game easy to understand by a lay person or a casual watcher. IMO the organizer also would like to make the game attractive to players so they would come to the tournaments in big numbers (discusable but lets assume this).


The other force - the body of tt equipment manufacturers. Their goal is also quite simple - to maximize the profit - no blaming them either. How - by making the equipment better ... BUT also i.e. by having the players to conform to any particular regulations. Sorry for simplification but basically the more confusion - the better. Stability here is generally bad for the business. Accidentally the manufacturers want to make rubbers such that with one touch your opponent is dead - how to advertise it in any way better? - hence i.e. the rallies must tend to be shorter.


I think a good analogy would be a boxing match. What would happen if the gloves specifications got out of the control like the tt equipment nowadays? Basically one good punch and there - we have a funeral : ) which is not to far from today's tt games anyway : )


But what makes it work, what makes it that fighters are able to survive even 12 rounds? Well - the equipment has to be THE SAME ...


The "ping pong" is one example. But I think there could be other rackets similar to today's tt equipment with a specifications such that it would assure more spectacular rallies, more interesting games - whatever you can imagine ... but the stabilization element is there - voilà! Could be of course - I imagine like 2-3 different kinds of racket classes (def, all, off ..?)


There still would be a room for different companies, competitors providing better equipment ensuring "organizers"/players needs. Better quality for longer, nicer rallies, no serve and kill possibility etc ...


Is ITTF strong enough to do that ... is it possible to head in this direction ..? I don't know. There is naturally a lot of business involved - lots of people simply having a job in the industry, kind of structural change ... But till this won't happen I think the wise thing at least is not to be surprised about the whole confusion or be angry at the situation ... Once you understand the nature of the problem it's easier to deal with it, mentally I think too ... : )




J.
 
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UHMMMM...... I'm pleading the 5th on this one because any honest answer I give may incriminate me. Lol

Come on people. The companies that make the rubbers boost them. I believe even many of the commercial tensor rubbers are boosted. Because if you apply a tensor rubber to your blade and play with it a couple of weeks. And for some reason you have to remove and reglue the rubber. You'll find that it has shrank. I believe the shrinkage is caused by the booster wearing off, allowing the spong to return to its original size. That's the only reason I can see for so many rubbers having the problem of shrinking after being applied to a blade.

So, when a rubber of mine shrinks. I expand it. Lol
 
I believe even many of the commercial tensor rubbers are boosted.

Which tensor brands you mean?

I haven't experienced any shrinkage with ESN tensors of Xiom rubbers.
Regarding degradation it's sponge is the last thing to degrade even after 100 hrs of play.
Yes, the dynamic friction layer is off after 60 hrs and the rubber goes out after 80, but the sponge stays pretty well.
 
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Which tensor brands you mean?

I haven't experienced any shrinkage with ESN tensors of Xiom rubbers.
Regarding degradation it's sponge is the last thing to degrade even after 100 hrs of play.
Yes, the dynamic friction layer is off after 60 hrs and the rubber goes out after 80, but the sponge stays pretty well.

Most ESN rubbers are "Factory Tuned". That is part of what the "Tensor" name refers to. This is common knowledge. You can smell it. You can feel a drop-off in performance of the rubbers after about 3 weeks.

Xiom rubbers are made in the ESN factory. Do the math.

MXP and FXP, I like the way they play after the tuning effect has worn off.


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Which tensor brands you mean?

I haven't experienced any shrinkage with ESN tensors of Xiom rubbers.
Regarding degradation it's sponge is the last thing to degrade even after 100 hrs of play.
Yes, the dynamic friction layer is off after 60 hrs and the rubber goes out after 80, but the sponge stays pretty well.

Here you go: in a current thread about how Andro Rasanter 47 seems to shrink too much this post was made that is a pretty good one:

In the case of MX-P, the reason I knew that it shrank is because it no longer fit my blade! But it would not shrink on the blade.

It was possible to boost it back to the size of the blade. (By the way, I never apply any tension at all when I attach rubbers, and this is behavior that is not seen in Karis and in my experience of ~9 years, T05; rather it was a particularly noted feature of factory boosted rubbers like MX-P with a strong booster smell).

MXP is a rubber made in the ESN factory. So is Rasanter.




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Ok, you may be right.
Maybe just to Bulgaria they save money and send untuned tensors. I don't know. The EU committee has already found that a lot of EU products sent to Bulgaria and other east european countrys are of worse quality.
But I will say it again with no argue - with all Xiom tensors i've played I've never experianced shrinkage, degradation of the rubbers starts after 60 hrs /how many weaks will depend/ more sensible on "dynamic friction" layered rubbers. The tensor spong stay intact much longer.
If it's "tuning" than it's result is on the opposite side regarding degradation and usable time of play. And it should be admired.
 
First - somebody above wrote that his tensors shrinked on the blade very soon after gluing, so it was my reaction to that.
Second - I play with new rubbers on my main blade for 40 hrs. After that I glue them to one of my 2 other blades. With each of these two blades I train different strokes for 30 minutes, after this first hour I train 1 more hour with my main blade. This way all my rubbers experience a total play of 80 hrs. They never shrinked, the spong is intact and the rubbers, even they have lost a lot of their properties, usualy look good enough to give them to some children in the club. For sure they look better and work better than 40-50 houred tenergys.
 
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Here, from the same thread:

My Xiom Vega Europe DF shrunk quite a bit. Needed to get some baby oil into it to expand the sponge. No doubt it affected playing properties but that wasn't a big concern.


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Maybe just to Bulgaria they save money and send untuned tensors. I don't know. The EU committee has already found that a lot of EU products sent to Bulgaria and other east european countrys are of worse quality.

I don't know. I'm not a big fan of conspiracy theories and this one here sounds a bit too far fetched to me.

See, ESN is producing rubbers for different companies from different countries. They produce from classical rubbers with little to no boosting to heavily boosted hi-end equipment.
Giving out b-class or c-class equipment to certain regions wouldn't be kept undercover for very long and wouldn't be good for their reputation and wouldn't do them much of a favour.
In fact they produce specialized equipment after the requests of their customers for different regions. The GEWO Hype KR comes to my mind.
Do you really think all the rubbers that fail quality control are shipped to your country? I hope you have some legit evidence to write such a heavy accusation on an international tabletennis forum.

That being said, i think your theory ain't nuttin' but another theory, and a far fetched one too, IMHO.

But i think shipping time and sitting on the shelf of a store for a while could let the factory boost of a rubber evaporate to notable degree.
Wouldn't that make more sense?
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I remember a well reputed member write that he's bought tenergy05 in japan and they had a different smell than the ones over here and they also felt more lively.
I can't confirm this since i haven't tried them yet, but i have two tenergy05 from butterfly-china [authentic] and their topsheet feels stronger and the sponge more lively.
I'll try to take a pic of the uncut one tomorrow.

So shipping and storage could really have an effect on factory boosting.
 
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But i think shipping time and sitting on the shelf of a store for a while could let the factory boost of a rubber evaporate to notable degree.
Wouldn't that make more sense?
Yes, that makes sense, and I've already sead that in another thread. This scenario really didn't come to my mind.
And if for more than 3 years they have been sending to Bulgaria very old rubbers consistently, then its not just a problem, its a scandal.
Anyway I'm not at all disappointed by Xiom rubbers, at least of their "out of boost" pieces, but I really want to try their boosted ones /or better say Fresh ones/ because if the nonboosted keep shoulder to shoulder with tenergys, what should I say for the boosted. I really want it.
 
Ok, men, anybody to tell me best TT store in Leeds UK?
My daughter is a student in Leed's University and in late september she will be able to send me the very fresh Xiom boosted tensors /provided there are fresh in Leeds, I'll instruct her to ask/
For now the brexit pound is very week against the euro and the price is comparable to this in Bulgaria. I will afford it.
 
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I certainly don't think that my experience with MX-P would necessarily apply to all ESN rubbers (I haven't tried all that many in recent years). MX-P is quite unusual because of the intensity of the booster smell right out of the package, which is my guess as to why to why it shrinks immediately after removing it from a blade. I actually tried R-47 (for one day). Didn't notice an obvious booster smell. I also didn't like it particularly, so took it off my blade and didn't notice if it had shrunk. However I gave it to a club mate who didn't seem to have any trouble attaching to his blade, which is the same head dimensions as mine. I've never tried any Xiom rubbers on my own blades.
 
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I remember a well reputed member write that he's bought tenergy05 in japan and they had a different smell than the ones over here and they also felt more lively.
I can't confirm this since i haven't tried them yet, but i have two tenergy05 from butterfly-china [authentic] and their topsheet feels stronger and the sponge more lively.
I'll try to take a pic of the uncut one tomorrow.

So shipping and storage could really have an effect on factory boosting.

Back when you could still buy T05 from foreign dealers I would occasionally buy it from tt-japan or iruiru. I never noticed anything different. This was in the late 2000s, before Btfly demanded that you could only buy from you regional dealer.

I wasn't looking to find a difference and certainly didn't notice one. (Maybe if I had been expecting something different I would have convinced myself it was different).
 
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I have bought ESN rubbers(Rakza7,Barracuda,FastarcG1) and when I took them out of the package they would not lay flat,domed in toward the sponge. This tells me that they had been on the shelf for awhile and the booster has evaporated,so I always use just enough booster to get them flat again. It's a pain in the arrs to try to glue the sponge when it"s like that. Anyone else experience this with a sheet of new rubber out of the package ?
 
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