Upgrading from pre-made, advice needed.

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I've been using DHS 5006 (2 of them) for years. I play almost 3-5 days a week in the past few months.
I'm considering getting a custom blade. There are tons info on different custom blade but not so on pre-made.
I have a hard time getting a educated guess on what DHS 5006 rated speed and control wise compare to custom blades.


Which custom blade is similar to the blade from DHS 5000 series?
More detail on the next post.
 
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My current style of play is penhold near table rely on my serve, ball placement, and footwork.
I push all backspins. Block most backhands. Smash high balls. Drive top or no spins if ball is not fast, othereise, placement.
I'm working on being more aggressive and loop backspins.

The one I'm currently using is less than a year old. I like the control but I have to put lots of energy to drive the ball.
I tried a racket from my friend and it's an all around blade with DHS gold arc 5. It feels much slower than my DHS 5006.
It's hard to compare due to different rubber.

The rubbers I'm planning on using will be DHS H3 Neo and 729 Battle II (not totally set though)

I'm thinking about Yasaka YSE or YEO. I don't want to spend more than US$70 on the blade.
Would YEO a better choice than YSE?
Is there other better affordable options?
I do consider Yinhe or 729 if the quality is good. I don't want to waste money buying low quality blade.
 
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If you like Yasaka blade, go with YSE first. It's slower than YEO but with way more control. Get a Battle 2 provincial for $23 from Prott.vip. That combo would give you lots of control and speed when you need it.

I am a penholder. I play two wing loop from mid distance. My blade is all wood OFF-. I use Chinese rubber on my forehand. I find it pretty fast from mid distance.

Passionate about TT
 
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In USA, you have a few options for that price point, all will be Chinese equipment.

1) www.colestt.com and www.ZeroPong.com hands down the most complete Chinese equipment sellers in USA with reasonable prices and USPS delivery. Coles uses Priority mail for $5, you cannot beat that. He can stuff a lot into a Med size pre-paid Priority box. You can email him, he will answer and has been helping others for decades. He posts on MyTT forum, but not here.

2) Use one of the big China based outfits. You will have selection, but a good wait for your gear, and stuff can happen to the gear along the way more often than stuff sent within USA... it is a risk of the business. You might get your stuff for 10-20 percent less price, but coles and zeropong are pretty darned reasonable.

Then you have the issue of what is "Suitable" or "Appropriate" for you. Most any of the setups you will get will feel different, that is a give. What you need to do is determine your current and potential future direction, then get equipment that is middle ground. That is a very easy to understand and sensible way to go about determining your equipment, but it takes a chunk of knowledge or a really good bullcrap filter to sort through all the hundreds of thousands of possibilities.


You basically want fast equipment that is not very spin sensitive (or can manipulate the spin with some touch) that has the potential to spin the ball if you use a loop stroke.

Looking at what Cole carries, you would do just fine with a Wavestone Blade with 999 Japan and Mec Tec. You set that up a combo, you will be somewhere around $60 complete.


Another concept would be something like a slower blade to help counter hitting close to table. So maybe the W-6 with not so brick hard rubbers, like Assassin/Defender that will run another $5 or so higher $65-ish USD - Whoop-tie-doo, that is still an appropriate outfit for a total price of one of the least expensive blades I sell. IF I had the Nexy Spear in C-Pen and you got Elpis, that would be around $100. It would be a very appropriate setup for what you are trying to do, but it is at least $40 more than what you will get that is appropriate for you from coles/zeropong. So you can see the value of Cole and Tom.
 
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The new mech-tech is very good for $14 a sheet. I was thinking of writing my first review on these rubbers since no one has yet.

I would not be too cheap with the blade. The Yasaka blades are keepers whereas a lot of the cheaper blades you will never play with again after a year or two. Rubbers come and go too.

The mech-tech rubbers will be much softer than the DHS rubbers and will have a little more spring.
 
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If you want chinese stuff order on ali-express. Generally lowest prices, but more importantly, shipping is free.
It's idiotic to pay for shipping almost the same as you pay for the rubber itself :)
 
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If you like Yasaka blade, go with YSE first. It's slower than YEO but with way more control. Get a Battle 2 provincial for $23 from Prott.vip. That combo would give you lots of control and speed when you need it.

I am a penholder. I play two wing loop from mid distance. My blade is all wood OFF-. I use Chinese rubber on my forehand. I find it pretty fast from mid distance.

Passionate about TT

YSE was my first choice until I tried a all around blade. Feels very slow. I'm afraid it's too slow for me.
I don't know many people with custom blades and none of them using hard Chinese rubber. It's hard to tell if YSE is right for me.
 
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Then you have the issue of what is "Suitable" or "Appropriate" for you. Most any of the setups you will get will feel different, that is a give. What you need to do is determine your current and potential future direction, then get equipment that is middle ground. That is a very easy to understand and sensible way to go about determining your equipment, but it takes a chunk of knowledge or a really good bullcrap filter to sort through all the hundreds of thousands of possibilities.

That's the main reason I post here. I want to get an idea on what DHS 5006 is similar to. That'll be much easier to find my fist blade without wasting money.
Even though table tennis is not new to me but shopping for equipment is.
 
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The new mech-tech is very good for $14 a sheet. I was thinking of writing my first review on these rubbers since no one has yet.

I would not be too cheap with the blade. The Yasaka blades are keepers whereas a lot of the cheaper blades you will never play with again after a year or two. Rubbers come and go too.

The mech-tech rubbers will be much softer than the DHS rubbers and will have a little more spring.

Is mech-tech the model or make?
 
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If you want chinese stuff order on ali-express. Generally lowest prices, but more importantly, shipping is free.
It's idiotic to pay for shipping almost the same as you pay for the rubber itself :)

The main reason going for a cheap Chinese blade is to set the baseline for me to go with better quality blade.
 
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The main reason going for a cheap Chinese blade is to set the baseline for me to go with better quality blade.

I used to play classic penhold style (play almost exactly the same way as you). I switched to shakehand about two years ago, because I can't get used to rpb. Anyways, I have the DHS 5002, which is the shakehand version of your DHS 5006. I would suggest getting YEO or Stiga Offensive Classic. Stiga Offensive is slightly slower than YEO, but both blades have great control and both are way lighter than the DHS 5006 you have.

As for rubbers, I would suggest 729 Battle II for FH. If you don't use BH, you don't even need to put rubber on BH side. But if you want to develop your BH, I would suggest something very controllable and light for BH rubber. Mark V is pretty good.
 
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I used to play classic penhold style (play almost exactly the same way as you). I switched to shakehand about two years ago, because I can't get used to rpb. Anyways, I have the DHS 5002, which is the shakehand version of your DHS 5006. I would suggest getting YEO or Stiga Offensive Classic. Stiga Offensive is slightly slower than YEO, but both blades have great control and both are way lighter than the DHS 5006 you have.
Intriguing. Switching to shakehand never came across my mind.
How long does it take for you to get back to penhold level?
Do you miss certain aspects of penhold after the switch?
Have you used any custom blade? Can you rate DHS 5002 against them?



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I think it is not apples and oranges to hold a premade up vs a real assembled bat, not even close.

I think it is good to look for the basic properties needed and go middle of the road for that category. Unfortunately, there are pretty much endless possibilities.. and until you get a chance to hit with even 10% of the possible blades/rubbers, then you wouldn't know for yourself. What a lot of us suggest is middle ground commonly known/tested/accepted for a certain play style or just general allround with room to grow.

If you ask and trust someone's opinion, like many do on forums, then it is a faith thing that may or may not work. You would still need to use judgment. Again, until you get a chance to hit with a lot of different setups, it may be difficult to apply that judgment.

In the Army, I always told Soldiers to "do what you can afford to do" if they didn't want to listen to advice.

On a similar level, we ALL have to gain our own experience. Some do it by being an EJ for life at an annual cost of USD $5000 or more, some do it by trying out other players' gear for two minutes at a time over a longer time period.

Anyone can ask on forums what would work for what and you will get some different responses. After a while, if one over-analyzes stuff, it gets out of hand and they become indecisive. Welcome to the fun world of TT equipment where makers and re-sellers will lure you with all manner of tempting description with misleading useless numbers.

I would say simplify and try one of what some of us suggest, not many of us are suggesting anything over $70 and that is not much money, that is still less than the price of ONE SHEET the best selling rubber in the world... and that barely lasts a month if your play decent and play every day.

Don't sweat it too much, it will only lead to more agony until you get a basic feel for what is out there.
 
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I have decide to test shakehand starting next week. I’ll force myself to stick with it for a month and reevaluate.
Lucky I have access to a robot at work. That’s gonna help me to learn the stroke for sure.


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I also recently switched over to a more dedicated setup. I spent some time messing around with a bunch of cheap chinese rubbers form cole's and eacheng but,when I joined a club, everyone had me switch over to tensors and they said that the cheap chinese rubbers messed up my stroke. I kindof regret all the time/money I wasted on chinese equipment but I feel like it was still a good step for me to take as a jump from prefab to tensor would've been too much to adjust to.
 
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I recommend you order your stuff from ali-express. It'll be way cheaper than most alternatives and delivery is free to boot, with very robust package tracking and refund policies.

The only 2 reasons to buy local shops is quicker delivery and maybe to support some local shop of yours, but really there's no other reason.
 
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