Timo Boll ALC

5 out of 5 rating for Timo Boll ALC

Timo Boll ALC is an outstanding blade.
-In my opinion, one of the blade with best control and touch for its speed range.
-Suitable for players seeking to win through precision in addition to speed and power (not suitable for total powerplay or hard hitters imo).
-Arylate carbon provides larger sweetspot = larger margin for quality shots even during unfavourable position + consistent ball feedback and return.
-Ply formation gives wide range of gear - supports various strokes in all phases of the rally (your skill is most likely the limit!).
-Blade head comparatively small = good maneuverability over the table for quick shots such as backhand banana flick.

Rubbers reccomendation:
Your preference, the blade is compatible with quite an extensive range of modern rubbers.
I personally prefer medium to medium-hard rubbers on this blade (currently using the blade with H3Neo Provincial 39deg on FH and Bluefire M2 on BH).

5 out of 5 rating for Timo Boll ALC

A great blade with excellent speed. The blade feels great when you hit the ball. It works excellently with Tenergy 05 rubbers. I would definitely recommend this blade to anyone who is experienced enough to control the blades high speeds. This is my definite favorite out of all the blades I've tried.

5 out of 5 rating for Timo Boll ALC

Great blade. I use it with max thickness soft, spinny rubber and it's a great combination. The blade is hard and fast but also works well for blocking and control shots.

5 out of 5 rating for Timo Boll ALC

hi i am using it like 4 months and im very satisfied.
its fast
loops are spinny and have loots of power.
its the perfect blade for any rubber.
i have hurr 3 neo nat on my fh and dhs g888 on my bh and i can say that everyone would be satisfied(except for the ones who like slower blades)
btw for the thin handle i use a tennis grip.
thank you!!!

5 out of 5 rating for Timo Boll ALC

Used this for 2 years.
Works really well with Tenergy rubbers. I have used the 05, 80, 80fx and 64.
This blade is really good for making slow, spinny, brush loops. Although it is a carbon blade, it has sufficient dwell time to create lots of spin.

5 out of 5 rating for Timo Boll ALC

I've had two of these blades, one 86 grammes and one weighing in at 87 grammes. I think this is a baseline for composite blades that all other blades have to be compared against. It is quite hard, with a muted feel. What really excels with the TB ALC is the precision. Blocks and passive shots are easy to perform, as the blade has a low throw and great stability. There is a great deal of power if you need it and a good touch for the short game.

5 out of 5 rating for Timo Boll ALC

Very balanced blade, it has it all. Fast, but also controlable and dwelly. good quality and nice finish. Its worth to give a try, its good for all kind of looping, blocking style. good close to the table and away also. I tried only with Tenergy 05 on both sides(boosted and unboosted. it's good in both ways)

5 out of 5 rating for Timo Boll ALC

This blade is one of the best i've used. I have used a Timo Boll Spirit for a long time, however since my recent purchase of the Timo Boll ALC I wouldn't change it back. It fits very well with my Calibra Tour and Joola Rhythm. It is very fast on the backhand side, even though I have a Joola rubber on my backhand which is 3 months old, it still feels brand new with this blade. The blade makes the rubber react very well, the sound of the rubbers are very loud with a clean feel which gives me great confidence when playing.

5 out of 5 rating for Timo Boll ALC

This is such an outstanding blade. I've played with Tenergy 05 in forehand and Tenergy 64 in backhand. This blade is very nice for backhand, you can block, attack well with Tenergy 64 and Spinny, speed forehand topspin with Tenergy 05; and great feeling and control in both hand. Its handle is just a bit small.

5 out of 5 rating for Timo Boll ALC

A great blade to match any type of player! (except choppers)

180$ = Worth buying.

You can hit very fast balls without much effort and still have some control on small plays.
This blade goes great with Tenergy series or any tensor rubbers.
I personally like to use this blade with Chinese rubbers and it performs quite well.
When I loop the ball with this blade, I can hit the ball in the corner of table.
When I make small plays like stop, push or even flick, this blade gave me nice control on the ball.

Summery ; quite well made blade which goes well with any types of rubbers!

5 out of 5 rating for Timo Boll ALC

Very comfortable blade (st handle), nice speed, nice stability and very balanced, this blade will optimized your rubbers. High quality blade. Worth your money.

5 out of 5 rating for Timo Boll ALC

The best blade out there for player who like to be agressiv close to the table with fast or really spinny attacks.
I started using this blade 2008 and my game stepped up immediately by 2 classes.
The durability of this blade is just incredible because the carbon makes the blade really stiff and the arylate provides that awesome feeling of control while brushing the ball thin.
It performs the best with T05. In my optinion there is no better blade in countertopsinning close to the table.
I also tryed H3 on the forehand which improved short pushing spinny attack close to the table, but lacks to much power against heavy backspin and counterspinning from half distance.
I would recommend it to agressiv players who have a really fast swing and play dominant with the forehand and like to step around.If u got that lifting Backspin is a piece of cake and the ball stays pretty low even with tons of topsin because of the low trajectory.Even though the blade still provides more than enough speed to perform great in half distance.
For me personally the only downside of this blade is controlling the backhandtopsin is a struggle,because you have to close the rackethead quite a lot.
Pushing,blocking and short recive is also not that eazy but the blade makes that up with it´s amazing offensiv capabilities.

4 out of 5 rating for Timo Boll ALC

I am playing with this blade already for 7 years I think, I had to change it once, but it was my own fault for not using varnish or hairspray.

It is very fast, it has a great touch for looping, it is the best looping blade I played with. At the beginning I played with two tenergy 05 on the blade and also boosting them. I have a great control with my forehand, no problem, but with the backhand I have to admit it was kind of a disaster for blocking! I changed to Tenergy 80 on the backhand, thickness 1.7 and no booster, and it is still very, very fast. But blocking is now okay.

If you want to loop all the time and play a mix between far from the table and close, it is the best blade. If you like to block, I would not recommend it

5 out of 5 rating for Timo Boll ALC

I have had this blade ever since it launched and there is something about this blade that makes me keep coming back to it.

It is a very well balance blade that is good for Looping, touch play, serving and also blocking. A quality built blade with a beautiful design.

This blade is good for players who like to loop close or mid distance away from the table and also for players who block. But want to add control to heir game.

I have been using this this Blade with Butterfly Tenergy 05 rubbers on both sides.

4 out of 5 rating for Timo Boll ALC

Well. The Timo Boll Alc for me ist just the classic carbon blade when it comes to modern table tennis. I've played most of the Butterfly Arylate Carbon blades and some people say they all play the same but for me this simply isnt true. The perfect Boll Alc for me weighs around 86 grams and has the best ratio of touch and speed.
I've tried so many different blades but allways came back to the ALC.


For Blocking this blade is crazy stable and just overall very consistent. Players like Fegerl, who is probably the best blocker in the world at this point, rely on this blade. Yet offensive blayers like Boll or Jao Monteiro play this blade too and this sums up my feeling for the blade. Its very stable in all shots and just overall good in every point of the game. It feels kinda hard because of the Arylte Carbon fiber but its still feels more "alive" then other pure Carbon blades.
The only thing that sometimes dissapoints me is the lack of flex of the blade, so i allways have to use enough acceleration to generate enough speed. This only effekts me on lazy days though

4 out of 5 rating for Timo Boll ALC

This blade is brilliant.It provides great dwell time making it easy to carry out effective open ups.This blade is also good for counter top spinning ,when timed just right.However,as this blade is a pure attacking blade your short game needs to be brilliant!This blade works well with any rubber in the tenergy series.Great blade!

5 out of 5 rating for Timo Boll ALC

An amazing bat in the right hand for the right style of play, I've been playing Table Tennis since the early 90's and due to life happening I stopped for around 15 years, last year I started playing again in a local club and since I've been out of the loop with current technologies and trend I bought this bat and pair it with 2 Tenergy 05 thanks to the recommendation of a good friend who's a coach. He told me "You can't go wrong with these combo".
Here is the thing, after a years playing with this combo I can see where he is coming from, the bat is amazing, it helps you in a way, top-spins are fast, initiating with loops as usually effortless on both sides BH and FH however I am about to change this blade for a slower, cheaper all-wood blade, why? you ask?
Well I happen to play close to the table most of the time with aggressive looping and flicking serves, and despite my efforts most of my blocks and exchanges close to the table end up going out of the table, the bat has indeed great control but it's still too fast for heavy aggressive game close to the table at least for me, I just feel I couldn't tame and use this bat to it's full potential, and no I am not a beginner I have a proper technique and knowledge of the game.
To sum up, this is an amazing composite blade, it does everything with little to no effort, but, keep in mind that if you are used to all-wood blades or if you play an offensive game close to the table you might need some adjusting and taming to do.

5 out of 5 rating for Timo Boll ALC

I am using the Boll ALC with T05 Red 2.1 for Forehand and T64 2.1 black for backhand. The boll ALC is a versatile blade with which you can play the passive game, short game and the looping game quite easily. The carbon inside kicks in when you start to play aggressive over the table counter loops or loop drives. The Blade has pretty decent flex, so you can equally play the short game effectively. I would rate this blade as Offensive. The speed is quite good but it is definitely not as fast as some of the other blades such as the Boll ZLC, the Sardius, Schlager carbon etc. All in all a great offensive blade which can prove to be very effective in almost all facets of the game. A must have if you want to upgrade from an all-wood blade to a carbon blade. Not recommended for beginner level players though.

5 out of 5 rating for Timo Boll ALC

Blade: Butterfly Timo Boll ALC
Weight: 88g
Thickness: 5.8mm
Type: Carbon OFF
Composition: 7 ply (Koto, ALC, Limba, Kiri, Limba, ALC, Koto)
Rubbers used with the blade: Tenergy 05

Hi guys, it’s Dan here from TableTennisDaily. Finally, after years of waiting and thousands of requests we are reviewing The Butterfly Timo Boll ALC, with none other than the legend himself Timo Boll. In November we were lucky enough to visit Borussia Dusseldorf to film the review using their unbelievable facility, where Timo Boll trains and represents his club in the German Bundesliga.



Written Review

Sweetspot and Control

The Timo Boll ALC is one of Butterfly’s flagship carbon blades and you can instantly feel the large crisp sweet spot on contact which helps to produce a very stable medium to high throw angle when playing topspins. I like this a lot about the Timo Boll ALC the feeling and sweetspot is crisp.

The amazing stand out quality of the Boll ALC is the sheer amount of spin it gives you on both your forehand and backhand. This is due to a large sweet spot, that offers incredible dwell time and feeling when you contact the ball.

Although the dwell is fantastic, the blade is still relatively hard which allows for powerful shots which work very well away from the table. Another great attribute about the Boll ALC is that it's so easy to control at high speeds.


Speed

Because the Boll ALC is very responsive you need to have good timing in order to make use of its full effects. However if you do time the ball correctly it is almost effortless to produce high amounts of speed, spin and control. I personally love the amounts of speed the Boll ALC gave me as for me, it's the right amount of speed where it's easy to play outright winners, without being so fast that it requires massive amounts of precision, like with the super ZLC series. In a sense the Boll ALC does a lot of the work for you, which gives you confidence in your strokes.


Spin

The Boll ALC excels when opening up against backspin, The dwell time and throw angle the blade produces is optimised for this type of shot.
The blade not only allows you to open up well but also lets you play hard on the follow up ball. The blade also has many gears which allows you to vary your spin and speed effortlessly when playing topspins.

Timo was getting some serious amount of spin and depth in his shots against my backspin. I have to say I struggled at times with blocking his shots, but I mainly put this down to the difficulty of playing against Timo. As you may be able to tell in the video above he really didn’t go easy on me. I think if I had a slower blade with softer rubbers I would have been able to control slightly easier, but having said that the Boll ALC, for an offensive carbon blade, still has a lot of control.


Counter Topspin

The Boll ALC is superb for countering, the hard outer koto layer helps to direct the ball quick. Sometimes the ball can fly out as like most carbon blades they are fast, the Boll has good stability in this area.


Serving and Flicks

The Boll ALC is great for generating spin whilst serving, as it gives you good feeling. However, due to the fact it is a fast blade, if you do not time the ball correctly it can drift long, giving your opponent the chance to capitalise on your mistake.

The crispness of the Boll ALC really helps when playing flicks and long digs, as the ball really bites into the blades surface. This also gives you the ability to really direct where you want the ball to go.


Away from the table

As mentioned previously the Boll ALC is superb when playing from mid distance to away from the table. The combination of arylate carbon and the harder wood outer plys gives you high end speed but enough flex to produce high arc which results in great depth. Landing the ball deep on the table being a key element when competing in top to top rallies.


Conclusion

A huge thanks to Timo Boll for his time to review his own personal blade, it really was an honour, and also to Borussia Dusseldorf for letting them use their incredible facility. And finally a thanks to Butterfly for providing us with the equipment to review.

The Boll ALC has an incredible balance of spin, speed and control. Butterfly and Timo have found a fantastic ratio for a carbon blade and it really goes to show why this blade is so widely used. It’s dwell and crisp feeling allows for superb stability in your strokes. This blades X factor is that its fast, but very controllable. That’s what I really like about the Boll ALC. This control is due to the blade ability in allowing you to produce vast amounts of spin making the ball dip quickly after it reaches your opponent's side of the table. Although this blade is quick, It’s not as fast as an OFF+ carbon blade like a primorac carbon or the Garaydia ZLC but is still a touch faster than an Innerforce or the Apolonia ZLC.

This Boll ALC is definitely not recommended for beginners as it would be too responsive. However a player who has developed efficient strokes and is on the intermediate to advanced spectrum would benefit most from this blade, especially if carbon blades are your thing.