My 40+ Balls and Gears

Bought some 40+ balls, rubbers and blades I can find from taobao. Just received the 3 star balls yesterday so I have not play with them yet. Doing some bounce test and both seamed DHS and DF balls are similar and stop sooner than C balls. On the other hand both seamless Palio and XSF bounce much longer and higher then seamed P and C balls. They are all bright white and old balls are yellow in comparison.


DF 3 star is not round. XSF is the best in roundness. DHS is similar and Palio is not bad. Only test one each so may not be 100% accurate. And a DHS 1 star is not round like the DF 3 star.


I have TA5 on HL5 BH. It is 35 degree but feel harder than T05. Perfect match to HL5 and both are classed as 40+ gears. But the whole setup is a very heavy 205g. Must be due to the larger than normal head size. I only use 1 layer of WBG without any tuning so it may not suit everyone.


I bought the whole series of six Palio Energy 40+ blades because they are dirt cheap. All six add up cheaper than half piece of tenergy. I have seller glue them for me with a mix of 40+ and normal rubbers from Palio and Kokutaku. 2 blades are all wood, 2 with carbon and 2 with fiber in different combination of plys ranging from 3 ply wood to 5 wood 4 fibers and 6 wood 2 carbons. Too bad the seller did not send me the rubber packages after assembling.


Palio 40+ rubbers are soft and bouncy. Kokutaku rubbers for seamless balls are very hard. Amazingly both approach suits the new ball just fine. Of course they are perfect to play with C balls as well. They all use current rubber names like Amigo, Drunken Dragon, 868 and 007.


Waiting for Stiga Airoc and Donic P balls from Dandoy. Donic is the only orange balls available for now. Can't buy orange Chinese balls yet.

I think I am well prepared.

Nice TurboZ! Looking forward to some more detailed review on those combos I think TA5 is causing the heigh weight. I have two similar setups where one is TA5 and the other is T64, where the former rubber is +10g heavier.

After a day of hard workout the balls are all smudge. Lucky no casualty so far. May be we did not hit them hard enough?

Only brought 2 Palio blades with me, the Energy 01 (3W) and Energy 06 (6W2C). They represent the slowest and fastest in the series. They are all 7mm thick and hard. Solid contact is needed for the seamless ball so I believe they got it right to go hard on blades. Palio 40+ Amigo rubber on 06 is soft, tacky and bouncy. Perfect fit between hard blade and soft rubber with the new balls. The 3 ply Energy 01 has strong vibration. With the very hard and tacky Kokutaku 007 for Seamless Ball rubber, it is not as pleasant to use. Still you have solid power to drive the ball with ease if hard rubber is your cup of tea.

One thing I find most disturbing is that we are not dealing with old and new balls, but actually Celluloid, Seam and Seamless balls. The three play with big differences and can't be mixed. Quite surprising to me that the biggest difference in play is between the 2 new balls and the C balls being in the middle.

The low bounce nature of Seam balls actually giving me most trouble. You can forget about 1 star DHS, they even bounce lower than the already low bounce 3 star. I see no lack of spin with this ball. A player serve strong and short back spin to me and I keep putting the ball to the net even with pushing. Later we changed back to C balls and I have no trouble returning his serves. Very weird feeling. Could be the low bounce keep getting me.

Being slower, less spin and high bounce, Seamless is the most easy to play with. I am always weak against LP. But today I felt like a few levels up with Seamless ball. I can keep the ball on the table with push and loop much longer than usual and kill it when the ball goes high. Thank you very much.

If ittf choose Seam balls, most club will have no choice but follow, and I don't think there is any meaning for training with Seamless unless you are not going out to play with people outside your circle. The situation is so sad.

I wish they can fix the low bounce issue soon and bring it up to Celluloid level as promised. Otherwise I think many people's game including mine will be mess.

I bet lunch they choose the better seamed balls, heavier, truer bounce and more solid.

Hey Abe, look for wherever they are doing the Korean American Labor Day tourney this year in NYC, I will likely be there. I bet lunch they will use celluloid balls at that tourney and IF my first bet is wrong, I but you lunch at the venue.

Originally Posted by agold

First of all, thanks for the information. Does the quote above mean that ittf will not be using seamed and seamless balls in IN tourneys? That's good, and I hope, based on your review, that they choose seamless

It is said that ITTF had officially chosen the new DHS 40+ seamed balls to use in ittf tournaments for the next 2 years. There is not much help using Palio 40+ gears to play with the new DHS balls. They must be designed with their own Seamless balls in mind.

The DHS ball survive the first day of play but not the second, thanks to a Jpen hard hitter.

There are serious issues regarding the durability of the seamed balls currently available made in China (Joola, DHS, Stiga, Donic, DF, etc.). They play ok but I am guessing they are still a work in progress, even though ITTF has approved them. Today I got to play with a made in Japan Nittaku 40+ ball (not yet generally available) and it was much much better to play with. It bounces exactly the same as the Nittaku celluloid (whereas the DHS balls bounce lower and the ridiculous seamless XSF balls bounce higher). I don't know how the Nittaku balls will be regarding durability, but they play more like celluloid than either of the other kind (although still a little slower and less spinny). Once they become available generally that is the only one I will use by choice. Hopefully in the fullness of time, the other company's balls will reach that standard.