Nittaku Violin vs Nittaku Violin Inner Carbon

jk1980 · Jul 11, 2022

Hi guys,

as a very old table tennis beginner (>40 yo) i found it quite easy to learn the first habbit in table tennis that is being an EJ.
Now i do have a fair share of blades that i already tested, but right now there is only the decision for me to decide to play one of two Nittaku blades. One would be my main blade and the other would be my secondory/spare one. I just wanted to have two similar blades, but not so similar that it would be pointless to buy the same twice.

I do own a Nittaku Violin weighing 87g and a Nittaku Violin Inner Carbon 84g currently. Now common sense would be that two blades being equal in all but weight, you would deem the lighter one to be the one with more control and less speed, correct ?

Before ordering the Nittaku Violin Inner Carbon blade i would have thought that it would be heavier then the full wood one. That is why i thought that i would "tone" down the rubbers on the carbon one to make it a little slower/easier and to somehow even things out, so that they would be more similar to play.
The full wood regular Violin currently has the Tibhar Evolution EL-S in 1.9-2.0mm on FH and Butterfly Tenergy 05 FX in 1.9mm on the Backhand.
The initial thought was to fit the carbon Violin with Tibhar Evolution EL-S in 1.7-1.8mm and FastArc G-1 in 1.8mm.
I know that the G-1 got a quite harder sponge than the 05 FX, but i wanted to see if there is some kind of synergy using the Nittaku Rubber on the Nittaku brand.

Does such a "evening out" of rubbers even work to make similar blades even more similar or do you guys think it is pointless ?

I will probably go along with that rubber setup for the carbon blade anyways, even though it is quite lighter than the full wood one. Is it possible that this inner carbon Violin would then be even slower than the full wood one ?

Thanks guys

riversquirrel · Jul 13, 2022

Congrats on your new hobby! Oh and I hope you are enjoying table tennis too lol.

I am an intermediate level player, so I will give you a bit of my own advice, but mostly the advice of my coach. In general, most of the advice that players should use slower rubber to slow down a fast carbon blade is bad for beginners. It's kind of like buying a race car, then putting snow tires on it and lifting it 3 inches so it doesn't hit the curb when you pull into your driveway. Sure, you can now use it as a daily driver, but you've missed the point of having a racecar. Carbon blades exist for speed, at the expense of control, feeling, and spin. High level players have trained for years to hit consistent high spin shots, and the carbon makes it easier for them to add speed and hit more consistent shots in tough situations. These attributes can also help newer players, but in my experience, even intermediate players take a step forward, but then they plateau because it is harder for them to improve their form with a carbon blade.

(Don't tell anyone else on this forum, but I think this is why EJs are so common, hell it happened to me. You get noticeably better in matches with a carbon blade, and then when you plateau, you spend all your money trying to get another skill boost through equipment)

But long story short, if you have rubber you like on a wood blade, don't search for a slower version to put on a carbon blade just because "carbon is better". You will end up with a paddle that is comparable in speed, but due to the carbon layer it will be harder to control, less flexible and therefore less spinny, and will provide less feedback, meaning it will be harder to distinguish by hand feel whether a shot was good or bad.

Lazer · Jul 13, 2022

Or you are a beginner a carbon blade is in the way, go for a 5 ply wood all to off - with a slow rubber like xiom vega Europe or even a Mark V. If your blade is really slow maybe a Yasaka Rakza7.
It is always better to go a little too slow tha a little too fast.

Yes it is very possible to slow down a blade that is too fast done it myself, but in my case (Primorac Carbon with Rakza 7 soft) I endes up with a very low trajectory. This I makes it harder to keep the ball on the table.

Cheers
L-zr

Wrighty67 · Jul 13, 2022

riversquirrel said:
Congrats on your new hobby! Oh and I hope you are enjoying table tennis too lol.

I am an intermediate level player, so I will give you a bit of my own advice, but mostly the advice of my coach. In general, most of the advice that players should use slower rubber to slow down a fast carbon blade is bad for beginners. It's kind of like buying a race car, then putting snow tires on it and lifting it 3 inches so it doesn't hit the curb when you pull into your driveway. Sure, you can now use it as a daily driver, but you've missed the point of having a racecar. Carbon blades exist for speed, at the expense of control, feeling, and spin. High level players have trained for years to hit consistent high spin shots, and the carbon makes it easier for them to add speed and hit more consistent shots in tough situations. These attributes can also help newer players, but in my experience, even intermediate players take a step forward, but then they plateau because it is harder for them to improve their form with a carbon blade.

(Don't tell anyone else on this forum, but I think this is why EJs are so common, hell it happened to me. You get noticeably better in matches with a carbon blade, and then when you plateau, you spend all your money trying to get another skill boost through equipment)

But long story short, if you have rubber you like on a wood blade, don't search for a slower version to put on a carbon blade just because "carbon is better". You will end up with a paddle that is comparable in speed, but due to the carbon layer it will be harder to control, less flexible and therefore less spinny, and will provide less feedback, meaning it will be harder to distinguish by hand feel whether a shot was good or bad.

This is very sound advice as far as my experience goes (and I have been there recently - back to 5 ply now....)

AndyK · Jul 13, 2022

As a 40+ table tennis player and junior EJ who's blown a considerable sum of money on blades and rubbers in the past year, I'm starting to come around to the conclusion that 5-ply is good enough for the vast majority of us who aren't semi-pro's or pro's. I just moved to a Nittaku Violin blade from a carbon setup, but paired it with harder/faster rubbers: Fastarc G-1 on the FH, and Victas V15 on the BH (both max. I find that it provides plenty of spin and power for my 1600 level. More importantly, it provides great control, and has helped me cut down on unforced errors.

jk1980 · Jul 13, 2022

riversquirrel said:
Congrats on your new hobby! Oh and I hope you are enjoying table tennis too lol.

Thank you. I am enjoying it very much. Funny how old one needs to become to find new things that one enjoys.

I am an intermediate level player, so I will give you a bit of my own advice, but mostly the advice of my coach. In general, most of the advice that players should use slower rubber to slow down a fast carbon blade is bad for beginners.

I do share your sentiment about about carbon blades. I was mainly checking reviews on many sites (revspin etc) and saw that the Violin Inner Carbon was rated higher in control than the regular Violin. That was when i thought "Ok, more control can't hurt" and but this second Violin with the inner carbon layer (which is supposed to be more close to full wood). My thinking was basically getting the benefit of a carbon blade (which would be the bigger sweet spot) for now no downside, since (at least according to ratings) it has more control than the all wood Violin.

If i was to believe the general mantra that a heavier blade is faster and less controlled than this would also point to the wooden Violin that i got being less controlled, since it weights 87g, compared to the new Carbon Violin with 84g.
I did try to compare the blades by hitting a few balls on the ball roboter and could not tell much difference, to be honest. Currently as it sits i can not say that the different feeling between the blades would lead me to think one feels better than the other.

But long story short, if you have rubber you like on a wood blade, don't search for a slower version to put on a carbon blade just because "carbon is better". You will end up with a paddle that is comparable in speed, but due to the carbon layer it will be harder to control, less flexible and therefore less spinny, and will provide less feedback, meaning it will be harder to distinguish by hand feel whether a shot was good or bad.

Thing is, i have thicker rubber on the wooden violin than on the carbon violin. By exchanging the Butterfly Tenergy 05 FX in 1.9mm on the regular Violin with a FastArc G-1 in 1.8mm on the carbon Violin i got exactly the result that i wanted. Less catapult and a slightly higher throw angle.

Wife is nagging me to go out, so i will reply to the others later

Lazer · Jul 13, 2022

You should know one thing “control” is the inverse of speed. A faster blade always has lower control than a slower blade, no exceptions it’s a physical fact.

Cheers
L-zr

jk1980 · Jul 13, 2022

AndyK said:
As a 40+ table tennis player and junior EJ who's blown a considerable sum of money on blades and rubbers in the past year, I'm starting to come around to the conclusion that 5-ply is good enough for the vast majority of us who aren't semi-pro's or pro's.

I definitely would not challenge that. Of course all wood blades should be good enough for next to everybody. There are so many different types of woods and ways to process wood to make it even harder that you probably can get a great variety of properties out of a blade consisting of different types of wood.

I just moved to a Nittaku Violin blade from a carbon setup, but paired it with harder/faster rubbers: Fastarc G-1 on the FH, and Victas V15 on the BH (both max. I find that it provides plenty of spin and power for my 1600 level. More importantly, it provides great control, and has helped me cut down on unforced errors.

The hard vs soft rubber was obviously a topic for me as a beginner. Recommendations were always "take something very soft with thin sponge", so i ended up with an aurus soft in 1.7mm on my backhand and the tibhar quantum x pro soft on the forehand (on an Yasaka Sweden Extra). Both pretty soft rubbers and they were ok, but whilst the aurus soft was ok on the backhand (probably since i use it very seldom) the forehand felt lacking subjectively with an odd throw angle. I then put an Tibhar Evolution FX-S on the forehand which felt quite a lot better. Even before i have tried the Rakza 7 Soft which was a very nice rubber with pretty good control, but it felt too slow for me.

I then read a review of the Tibhar Evolution Series rubbers which depicted the EL-S as more of a rubber for developing players and the FX-S for intermediate rubbers, so i went the EL-S road. I like this rubber alot that is why it is on my all wood Violin in 2.0mm (paired with a Tenergy 05 FX in 1.9). This worked out fine just but i felt the short game was lacking with a little too much catapult. So i could either mess with the rubbers again on the existing Violin or get something similar enough with different rubbers to compare. The options were the OSP Virtuoso - and the Violin inner carbon (which was kinda hard to get). Thinking that the Violin inner carbon would be closer to the Violin i figured if i switched between these two the changes would not be as big.

Wrighty67 said:
This is very sound advice as far as my experience goes (and I have been there recently - back to 5 ply now....)

I am definitely not opposed to 5ply woods, i started off with a cheap 5 ply (for a week or two) and then played the pongfinity blade (which is a 7ply wood with 45° esn rubbers) for approximately 5 weeks. Only after that time i was invested enough to go the custom bat route. I got the Stiga Infinity VPS V with Omega VII Europe and Rakza 7 Soft rubbers. A club mate then told me that he did not like the blade because it was too fast for him and then i thought, if it is too fast for somebody playing for years already, then it is probably too fast for me as well. Next blade was the Yasaka Sweden Extra, with those Tibhar rubbers. For me playing table tennis is not only about the act of playing itself, but also the whole universe around it regarding equipment. I like doing statistics and comparing different setups. When i read the reviews of the Nittaku Violin i knew that i had to try that out at some time and when i was bored with the YSE, i got the Violin (which i am tottaly satisfied with), even though i do not feel the touch that much better than with the YSE, but that is probably due to me being an beginner still.

Lazer said:
Or you are a beginner a carbon blade is in the way, go for a 5 ply wood all to off - with a slow rubber like xiom vega Europe or even a Mark V. If your blade is really slow maybe a Yasaka Rakza7.
It is always better to go a little too slow tha a little too fast.

I totally agree and i liked the omega VII europe rubber (which should be similar to the vega europe in softness) but unfortunately i had it on an too fast blade (Stiga Infinity VPS). I even did try the Vega Intro because it was recommended by a club mate but that felt so dead that i would have needed extraordinary force to play it in the half distance.

I don't have many ways to compare the two violin setups that i got right now, but what i did is let the ball bounce on both blades from the same height and see how far up the ball will bounce. I think you could probably call that the catapult effect of the rubber, if it bounces higher than on the other ? The result was that the ball bounced higher on the all wood Violin than on the carbon Violin. That would lead me to believe that the setup on the carbon violin is slower or at least less catapulty. What are your thoughts about that train of thought ? Am i misjudging the lower ball bounce of the carbon violin ?

Yes it is very possible to slow down a blade that is too fast done it myself, but in my case (Primorac Carbon with Rakza 7 soft) I endes up with a very low trajectory. This I makes it harder to keep the ball on the table.

Cheers
L-zr

Fortunately the G-1 i play on the carbon Violin has a high trajectory (even higher than the EL-S i used on the wood Violin) and as of now i experienced a similar if not higher trajectory with the carbon + G1 setup. I think one probably really also needs to differentiate between outer and inner carbon. Perhaps inner carbon simply does not expose those carbon properties that much.

riversquirrel said:
But long story short, if you have rubber you like on a wood blade, don't search for a slower version to put on a carbon blade just because "carbon is better". You will end up with a paddle that is comparable in speed, but due to the carbon layer it will be harder to control, less flexible and therefore less spinny, and will provide less feedback, meaning it will be harder to distinguish by hand feel whether a shot was good or bad.

I get where you are coming from and it was not the "carbon is better" mindset that led me to buy the carbon violin, but rather the thinking that i want to have two very similar blades as many people do. Basically having a backup. Being more than 160€ i could not justifiy buying the very same blade just as backup, so i went for the inner carbon. I was curious about if the EL-S in 2.0 that i played on the forehand now was really more catapulty than the G-1 in 1.8 or the EL-S in 1.8. I thought i could still go back to the all wood Violin, if my theory was wrong and the carbon Violin would be wait to fast even with thinner rubbers, but it was exactly like i was hoping for. The carbon Violin does play more controlled to me so far. In the worst case and if i see myself making more unforced errors than usual, i can simply swap rubbers and use those toned down rubbers on the wood violin and keep playing with that.

Lazer said:
You should know one thing “control” is the inverse of speed. A faster blade always has lower control than a slower blade, no exceptions it’s a physical fact.

Yes, i have learned that this is the general rule of thumb. I think there might be more to this though. Two blades with equal speed might still be very different in control. Just imagine one blade being very flexy and basically requiring you to very exactly hit the sweet spot to play a proper controlled ball and the other allowing you to even hit the same ball closer to the edge of the blade and still fly the way the player intended. In this scenario i think the carbon blade with greater sweetspot would have more control, wouldn't it ?

My neighbour has an BTY Grubba All+ carbon blade and that one is not fast at all (but probably pretty controlled benefiting from the slow pace and the greater sweet spot).

Are my thoughts sensible or do i misunderstand something here ?

Wrighty67 · Jul 13, 2022

jk1980 said:
I definitely would not challenge that. Of course all wood blades should be good enough for next to everybody. There are so many different types of woods and ways to process wood to make it even harder that you probably can get a great variety of properties out of a blade consisting of different types of wood.

The hard vs soft rubber was obviously a topic for me as a beginner. Recommendations were always "take something very soft with thin sponge", so i ended up with an aurus soft in 1.7mm on my backhand and the tibhar quantum x pro soft on the forehand (on an Yasaka Sweden Extra). Both pretty soft rubbers and they were ok, but whilst the aurus soft was ok on the backhand (probably since i use it very seldom) the forehand felt lacking subjectively with an odd throw angle. I then put an Tibhar Evolution FX-S on the forehand which felt quite a lot better. Even before i have tried the Rakza 7 Soft which was a very nice rubber with pretty good control, but it felt too slow for me.

I then read a review of the Tibhar Evolution Series rubbers which depicted the EL-S as more of a rubber for developing players and the FX-S for intermediate rubbers, so i went the EL-S road. I like this rubber alot that is why it is on my all wood Violin in 2.0mm (paired with a Tenergy 05 FX in 1.9). This worked out fine just but i felt the short game was lacking with a little too much catapult. So i could either mess with the rubbers again on the existing Violin or get something similar enough with different rubbers to compare. The options were the OSP Virtuoso - and the Violin inner carbon (which was kinda hard to get). Thinking that the Violin inner carbon would be closer to the Violin i figured if i switched between these two the changes would not be as big.

I am definitely not opposed to 5ply woods, i started off with a cheap 5 ply (for a week or two) and then played the pongfinity blade (which is a 7ply wood with 45° esn rubbers) for approximately 5 weeks. Only after that time i was invested enough to go the custom bat route. I got the Stiga Infinity VPS V with Omega VII Europe and Rakza 7 Soft rubbers. A club mate then told me that he did not like the blade because it was too fast for him and then i thought, if it is too fast for somebody playing for years already, then it is probably too fast for me as well. Next blade was the Yasaka Sweden Extra, with those Tibhar rubbers. For me playing table tennis is not only about the act of playing itself, but also the whole universe around it regarding equipment. I like doing statistics and comparing different setups. When i read the reviews of the Nittaku Violin i knew that i had to try that out at some time and when i was bored with the YSE, i got the Violin (which i am tottaly satisfied with), even though i do not feel the touch that much better than with the YSE, but that is probably due to me being an beginner still.

I totally agree and i liked the omega VII europe rubber (which should be similar to the vega europe in softness) but unfortunately i had it on an too fast blade (Stiga Infinity VPS). I even did try the Vega Intro because it was recommended by a club mate but that felt so dead that i would have needed extraordinary force to play it in the half distance.

I don't have many ways to compare the two violin setups that i got right now, but what i did is let the ball bounce on both blades from the same height and see how far up the ball will bounce. I think you could probably call that the catapult effect of the rubber, if it bounces higher than on the other ? The result was that the ball bounced higher on the all wood Violin than on the carbon Violin. That would lead me to believe that the setup on the carbon violin is slower or at least less catapulty. What are your thoughts about that train of thought ? Am i misjudging the lower ball bounce of the carbon violin ?

Fortunately the G-1 i play on the carbon Violin has a high trajectory (even higher than the EL-S i used on the wood Violin) and as of now i experienced a similar if not higher trajectory with the carbon + G1 setup. I think one probably really also needs to differentiate between outer and inner carbon. Perhaps inner carbon simply does not expose those carbon properties that much.

I get where you are coming from and it was not the "carbon is better" mindset that led me to buy the carbon violin, but rather the thinking that i want to have two very similar blades as many people do. Basically having a backup. Being more than 160€ i could not justifiy buying the very same blade just as backup, so i went for the inner carbon. I was curious about if the EL-S in 2.0 that i played on the forehand now was really more catapulty than the G-1 in 1.8 or the EL-S in 1.8. I thought i could still go back to the all wood Violin, if my theory was wrong and the carbon Violin would be wait to fast even with thinner rubbers, but it was exactly like i was hoping for. The carbon Violin does play more controlled to me so far. In the worst case and if i see myself making more unforced errors than usual, i can simply swap rubbers and use those toned down rubbers on the wood violin and keep playing with that.

Yes, i have learned that this is the general rule of thumb. I think there might be more to this though. Two blades with equal speed might still be very different in control. Just imagine one blade being very flexy and basically requiring you to very exactly hit the sweet spot to play a proper controlled ball and the other allowing you to even hit the same ball closer to the edge of the blade and still fly the way the player intended. In this scenario i think the carbon blade with greater sweetspot would have more control, wouldn't it ?

My neighbour has an BTY Grubba All+ carbon blade and that one is not fast at all (but probably pretty controlled benefiting from the slow pace and the greater sweet spot).

Are my thoughts sensible or do i misunderstand something here ?

I think your biggest issue right now is you have two completely different blades (despite both being Violin) - both in construction and weight, which are both significant differentials and so it’s almost impossible to compare the two.

superbackhand · Jul 13, 2022

we all read the reviews and believe them, thinking “yes that is how it is gonna work for me”.
in fact, table tennis mainly is about ball feeling and EVERYONE has their own feeling.
it is best to just try it for ourselves and see what works and what not.
IN FACT, some reviewers sound more impressive than their real skill. i know a guy who reviews a lot of equipments in here, taking about looping with this rubber is fantastic while in real match he couldn’t do a proper loop.
just my 2c.

jk1980 · Jul 13, 2022

Wrighty67 said:
I think your biggest issue right now is you have two completely different blades (despite both being Violin) - both in construction and weight, which are both significant differentials and so it’s almost impossible to compare the two.

The rubbers may be different, yes and that is something that i will align soon (using a 1.8mm G-1 on the all wood violin that will replace the T 05 FX).
In terms of weight both are the same though. Both blades with rubbers end up at pretty much exactly 180g. My prediction is that the wood Violin will probably be even heavier after i replaced the Tenergy with the G-1

jk1980 · Jul 14, 2022

superbackhand said:
we all read the reviews and believe them, thinking “yes that is how it is gonna work for me”.
in fact, table tennis mainly is about ball feeling and EVERYONE has their own feeling.
it is best to just try it for ourselves and see what works and what not.
IN FACT, some reviewers sound more impressive than their real skill. i know a guy who reviews a lot of equipments in here, taking about looping with this rubber is fantastic while in real match he couldn’t do a proper loop.
just my 2c.

Yes, that can very well be true.
I of course also note how many reviews a specific blade or rubber has and if more than 80 people come to a conclusion about the control being a 9.5 or whatever, who am i to challenge this ? All i can say is that 80 people involved enough in table tennis to register on revspin or whatever site reviewed the rubber or blade like this. These "votes" are as important or valid to me as any other opinion about a blade/rubber by a person that i don't know.

The feeling will indeed be very subjective and things that a club mate said to be "too much vibration" i did not even notice. In fact i noticed a difference between my old bat and his, but if he would not have told me, i would not have noticed any vibration.

The "try it yourself" is indeed what i am doing right now and i am in no hurry, since i strongly believe that whatever equipment i use, my personal skill and technique that will need to improve have a way bigger impact on the result. I dont even plan to play competitively anytime soon, so i am taking my time.

Of course it would be awful if i made progressing my technique harder by using too difficult equipment, but the good thing is i wouldn't notice anyways

According to the reviews of the blades i used so far they dont seem to stray very far off to any direction, so i hope i dont make things too difficult for me.

The blades i used so far were:

Stiga Infinity VPS V, Yasaka Sweden Extra, Nittaku Violin, Nittaku Violin Inner Carbon

TTD Ratings of these blades:
Blade | Category | Speed |Control| Hardness | Durability | Number of Reviews
Infinity | . OFF . | - 7.3 - | - 8.0 - | - 6.0 - | - 5.7 - | . 17
YSExt | . ALL .. | - 7.4 - | - 8.8 - | - 4.0 - | - 7.6 - | . 4
Violin.. | . OFF . | - 7.2 - | - 9.5 - | - 5.5 - | - 7.7 -| . 7

Of course the TTD Ratings might be taken with a pinch of salt since the number of reviewees is rather small, but i also compared the values of revspin.

Revspin Ratings of these blades:
Blade .|Speed|Control | Stiffness | Hardness | Consistency | Overall Rating | Number of Reviews
Infinity ...| 8.7 | 8.9 | 5.4 | 6.3 | 9.0.| 9.1 | 81
YSExt ....| 7.9 | 9.2 | 3.6 | 4.7 | 9.4.| 9.2 | 43
Violin .....| 8.3 | 9.0 | 3.2 | 5.0 | 9.6.| 9.4 | 46
Violin CI .| 8.8 | 9.4 | 4.5 | 5.0 |10.0 | 9.5 | 11

We do see that the ratings between TTD and Revspin do match mostly. I also see that i did not change blades to a totally different style of blade if you exclude the early attempts with the Stiga Infinity.
If the Violin Carbin is really more stiff (=less flex) than the regular Violin, wouldn't that mean that it has less catapult of its own and would be potentially better in the short short game ?

You see i really like this theorycrafting aspect of the sport, because it enables me to engage with the topic table tennis at times that i am not able to actualy practice it (like now in the middle of the night).

Wrighty67 · Jul 14, 2022

jk1980 said:
The rubbers may be different, yes and that is something that i will align soon (using a 1.8mm G-1 on the all wood violin that will replace the T 05 FX).
In terms of weight both are the same though. Both blades with rubbers end up at pretty much exactly 180g. My prediction is that the wood Violin will probably be even heavier after i replaced the Tenergy with the G-1

What I meant was 87 vs 84g blade weight - regardless of total weight this will impact feel. Secondly one is carbon inner vs one all wood = different blades.

jk1980 · Jul 14, 2022

Wrighty67 said:
What I meant was 87 vs 84g blade weight - regardless of total weight this will impact feel. Secondly one is carbon inner vs one all wood = different blades.

Ok, i got you in the wood vs carbon topic and of course it does feel different. I just can not feel it enough that I would say that I like one feeling over the other.

So would you say the feeling is more impacted by the bare bat weight than the total weight of bat+rubbers? If both would be full wood blades?

Logically if the rule heavy=speed is true and my full bats weigh the same this would equal things out and the only addition of speed i should notice is due to the carbon layer.

Do you think that a bounce height test would be a decent way to test the speed at least in a comparative manner?

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Wrighty67 · Jul 14, 2022

jk1980 said:
Ok, i got you in the wood vs carbon topic and of course it does feel different. I just can not feel it enough that I would say that I like one feeling over the other.

So would you say the feeling is more impacted by the bare bat weight than the total weight of bat+rubbers? If both would be full wood blades?

Logically if the rule heavy=speed is true and my full bats weigh the same this would equal things out and the only addition of speed i should notice is due to the carbon layer.

Do you think that a bounce height test would be a decent way to test the speed at least in a comparative manner?

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Good questions. My thoughts are that the base blade weight will have an impact - key being where the weight is located (in this case being the blade vs rubber) No doubt heavier overall will impact speed but I think blade weight is significant.

if it was me I would match rubbers as closely as I can and compare - I’ve done this a few times and it’s the only way to isolate the blade in my opinion. I would expect the feel of these two blades to be fairly different given weight and construction.

I love my Violin and have an OSP Virtuoso- coming soon to compare to it. The small handle on the Violin is my only dislike. When comparing the Violin to inner carbon blades like the Harimoto recently I found the feel very different, particularly in match play where the all wood offers much better control for me.

jk1980 · Jul 14, 2022

Wrighty67 said:
Good questions. My thoughts are that the base blade weight will have an impact - key being where the weight is located (in this case being the blade vs rubber) No doubt heavier overall will impact speed but I think blade weight is significant.

if it was me I would match rubbers as closely as I can and compare - I’ve done this a few times and it’s the only way to isolate the blade in my opinion. I would expect the feel of these two blades to be fairly different given weight and construction.

I love my Violin and have an OSP Virtuoso- coming soon to compare to it. The small handle on the Violin is my only dislike. When comparing the Violin to inner carbon blades like the Harimoto recently I found the feel very different, particularly in match play where the all wood offers much better control for me.

I am currently not looking forward to throw another 100 bucks for the rubbers at the "problem", but of course making all rubbers the same would be the best way to compare.

In the "help choosing a robot" thread i saw a video of somebody letting a robot hit the rubber several times. I will do that with the two rackets and compare the speed and throw angle. I have seen a tool somewhere that can derive the speed from tracking the ball in a video. That should give me a rough estimate.

I am looking forward to you receiving the OSP Virtuoso, because everybody says it would be close to the Violin.

Wrighty67 · Jul 14, 2022

jk1980 said:
I am currently not looking forward to throw another 100 bucks for the rubbers at the "problem", but of course making all rubbers the same would be the best way to compare.

In the "help choosing a robot" thread i saw a video of somebody letting a robot hit the rubber several times. I will do that with the two rackets and compare the speed and throw angle. I have seen a tool somewhere that can derive the speed from tracking the ball in a video. That should give me a rough estimate.

I am looking forward to you receiving the OSP Virtuoso, because everybody says it would be close to the Violin.

Totally understand - I look for lightly used rubber on eBay for that purpose.

I’ll let you know how the Virtuoso plays!

Nittaku Violin vs Nittaku Violin Inner Carbon

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