Wow. $75 worth of minimum quality equipment.
Sorry about the bluntness but I simply can't hold this in. How are you still falling for this stuff?
If you cancel this order, and repeat doing that for a couple of months, you can easily pay for that w968 you've been trying to find cheap alternatives for. And the T05, D09c too. Heck, you can pay for a couple of good coaching sessions, too to get the best out of it.
Eh I don't know. To each their own but I've found that more expensive doesn't always = better. Hang on let me look around in storage here. I know there's a garage sale paddle I can't even remember where I got somewhere. (few minutes later) Ah here it is. Now I have two of them. One of them is a dollar. The other is 10. I'm willing to sell you them. You get to pick. Naturally the 10 dollar one is worth more right?
... Right? (#rehtorical)
My personal experiences:
1
I've always been a chinese tacky rubber type of guy. Generally spending anywhere from 5 bucks for a Mercury 2 (surprisingly good. Just not that fast) to commercial H3 neo which I think last time I bought it was like 20 bucks years ago. Then one day I wanted to step it up & get something of real quality. Spend more right? (see I'm guilty of it too.) So I got MXP which right now goes for looks like $40 in my area. I'm telling you right now that rubber sucks. I hated it. I just felt like the topsheet went to meh in no time flat. Of course this is subjective but for me gun to my head and the person is saying "you must play with MXP or Mercury 2 on your FH. Choose." I'm picking Mercury 2 every day of the week & twice on Sunday.
2
Back in the day one of first blades I had was a Stiga Clipper Classic. I want to say I paid around 80 bucks for it. It was widely regarded as a great blade. Now a days carbon is more in favor but at that time that was a great blade. And it was good. However since that time I've owned 3 Gambler blades (a US supplier) and they typically sell their blades for $40. Every singe blade I've had from then has not only matched that Clipper in build quality & performance but I'd say has exceeded it. How can this be? It's $40 vs $80? Oh that's right. Gambler doesn't have the massive marketing budget to support like Gambler does. Sometimes something is just more expensive not necessarily because it's better but because that company knows they can get away with it selling X product at that price. If they can get more based on name, why not?
3
Recently (yes I never learn). A buddy who does not play Chinese tacky was really talking up Butterfly Rozena as a low cost good rubber. He let me borrow it to test it out for a while. I tend to agree. It's good. But this post is getting long already so I'll cut to the chase. It's ehh, fine. Give me Chinese tacky over this stuff.
4
(and this is the most important thing). Years ago I had my setup and I was hitting with a kid at club who at the time was in the top 25 cadets in the US. Safe to say pretty much anybody here would say "yes he's good. the kid can play." I think at the time he had Tenergy 05 on his FH and some expensive blade. We switched for a few minutes hitting. My guessing 70 dollar setup vs his I can only assume well north of 200 setup. If you didn't know we had switched paddles from watching us hit before, I don't think anybody would have been able to tell the difference. He was just as pure, powerful & spiny as he was before and I was about the same with his. I'm not going to say equipment doesn't matter. Certainly not. But I do think we overvalue these things a little sometimes.
If TensorBackhand likes it that's all that matters.
