Hugo Calderano HAL is currently a good option?

jk1980 said:

who told you that it would be a good option for you specifically ? How long are you playing for and at what level ?

They blade may be decent and controllable if you compare it with other carbon blades, but if we would simply look at your requirements beeing good control, good feedback and reasonable speed a carbon blade would probably not be the first that comes to mind. If you only need reasonable speed, you dont need anything but an all wood blade (be it 5 or 7 ply).

If you want control and feel many people consider the Nittaku Violin blade a pretty well controlled and good feeling blade. It is around 150€.
If you want to go cheaper you can also go for Yasaka Sweden Extra or a Donic Appelgren Allplay. Both are good controllable blades.

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Thanks, I based my decision reading forums since in my country there is no way to test blades. I am an intermediate level player, but I want to improve so I want a blade with better feedback than the one I currently have Fang Bo Carbon, I read in forums that the HAL is for all player levels and has what I am looking for control and good feedback I don't really care about speed.

I also had that blade in mind along with the acoustic but I don't know which one to choose. I have also tried the nittaku acoustic inner and I like it. Is there much difference with the allwood version?

PS sorry for my English I don't know how to express myself in this language as I would like.

jk1980 said:

who told you that it would be a good option for you specifically ? How long are you playing for and at what level ?

They blade may be decent and controllable if you compare it with other carbon blades, but if we would simply look at your requirements beeing good control, good feedback and reasonable speed a carbon blade would probably not be the first that comes to mind. If you only need reasonable speed, you dont need anything but an all wood blade (be it 5 or 7 ply).

If you want control and feel many people consider the Nittaku Violin blade a pretty well controlled and good feeling blade. It is around 150€.
If you want to go cheaper you can also go for Yasaka Sweden Extra or a Donic Appelgren Allplay. Both are good controllable blades.

Click to expand...

Thanks, I based my decision reading forums since in my country there is no way to test blades. I am an intermediate level player, but I want to improve so I want a blade with better feedback than the one I currently have Fang Bo Carbon, I read in forums that the HAL is for all player levels and has what I am looking for control and good feedback I don't really care about speed.

I also had that blade in mind along with the acoustic but I don't know which one to choose. I have also tried the nittaku acoustic inner and I like it. Is there much difference with the allwood version?

PS sorry for my English I don't know how to express myself in this language as I would like.

jk1980 said:

If you are already coming from an carbon blade, the HAL could indeed give you what want, if reviews are to be trusted. That would probably only be a marginal change though, since there is a pretty big chasm between the average carbon blade and the full wood blades

I gotta preface that i am only a very interested beginner and probably read more about table tennis than many people that played for 30 years already.
Indeed i already tried several different blades and the latest three were the Nittaku Violin in 87g, a Nittaku Violin Inner Carbon in 84g and the Nittaku Acoustic 86g.
Between the Nittaku VIolin and the inner Carbon Violin i could not even tell a big difference in feeling (which is good, since the inner Carbon one does not feel worse to me). What i could notice and test though, that the inner Carbon had more speed/catapult (both using the same rubber Nittaku FastArc G-1 in 1.8mm) even when passively played. I think you can even test that easily by doing a drop test next to each other and see if the ball already bounces higher on one of them, even though there is only the force of the ball falling from 50cm onto the stationary blade, you can already see the inner carbon being about 10 - 20% more bouncy. I like both Violins very much, but today i bought a used Acoustic and glued on a FastArc G-1 in 2.0mm on it. I compared it with the regular all wood Violin for 2 hours with my Roboter with different drills. Now i can not 100% tell if it is just the blade or the thicker sponge of the G-1 or the combination of both, but wow: I have never been able to play such spinny topspins like with the Acoustig with the G-1 in 2.0mm. You basically can even here it that i brush the ball so light that it makes a very low thumb-sound.

I have read that the Violin is allegedly more stiff than the Flexy acoustic and according to reviews that would mean that the Acoustic would benefit from "harder" rubbers like the G-1 more, than the Violin. Indeed was the Violin pretty enjoyable with the Tibhar Evolution EL-S, which is kinda 46° compared to the G-1's 47'5° hardness.

Since the test between the regular Violin and the Acoustic did not show the Acoustic to be less controllable, i will play with that one from now on.

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I really appreciate your opinion, thank you very much for taking the time to answer me.

jk1980 said:

who told you that it would be a good option for you specifically ? How long are you playing for and at what level ?

They blade may be decent and controllable if you compare it with other carbon blades, but if we would simply look at your requirements beeing good control, good feedback and reasonable speed a carbon blade would probably not be the first that comes to mind. If you only need reasonable speed, you dont need anything but an all wood blade (be it 5 or 7 ply).

If you want control and feel many people consider the Nittaku Violin blade a pretty well controlled and good feeling blade. It is around 150€.
If you want to go cheaper you can also go for Yasaka Sweden Extra or a Donic Appelgren Allplay. Both are good controllable blades.

Click to expand...

Airoc said:

Compared to any carbon blade (that I know) the HAL will give you more of an all wood feeling. The feedback is excellent, however "control" is something only you can feel. If the blade supports your shots at any speed you might call that controlled, while other people use control in a linear relationship with speed, where slow is controlled. So, the HAL is not slow, but I feel it´s very supportive/"controlled".

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Thanks for your answer, I had read that the blade felt similar to an allwood but not quite. So I will choose to buy it to clear my doubts.

jk1980 said:

who told you that it would be a good option for you specifically ? How long are you playing for and at what level ?

They blade may be decent and controllable if you compare it with other carbon blades, but if we would simply look at your requirements beeing good control, good feedback and reasonable speed a carbon blade would probably not be the first that comes to mind. If you only need reasonable speed, you dont need anything but an all wood blade (be it 5 or 7 ply).

If you want control and feel many people consider the Nittaku Violin blade a pretty well controlled and good feeling blade. It is around 150€.
If you want to go cheaper you can also go for Yasaka Sweden Extra or a Donic Appelgren Allplay. Both are good controllable blades.

Click to expand...

Tony's Table Tennis said:

It is indeed a good blade. A very good blade.
If it is good for you, I think its a 50-50 call

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