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After playing with carbon/arlylate blade for 20 years I am back to all wood blades. 'nuf said.
Thank you for the kind words and let me bid you welcome to the site Grahambatts! There are a lot of members here that can give qualified, but also quality answers. Some of them have already posted in your thread, but there are many others that are helpful as well. To your question about what is better? There is not really an answer where you can put an equal sign to it. Most comes down to level, personal preference and playing style. For instance if I favor a carbon blade a defense player would not necessarily favor the same blade. Hope you get my point and good luck using the forum.As a newbie to this forum I must say I am hugely impressed with the volume and quality of responses to my question this morning. Not just that, but also the fact that the comments have come from about nine different countries. All that tells me two things very clearly. Firstly, that table tennis as a sport is in a very healthy state world wide, and secondly that this site is brilliant! I used to participate a lot in another forum but I have been away from it for a while, as I spend many hours every week coaching and doing other stuff for my TT club.
I don't remember you using an all wood blade when I first met you. And I also remember you using a 1 ply hinoki for a while before a coach forced you to use an All wood 5 ply ALL+ to play (and you have stuck with them ever since). Acquired taste based on success in your most intensive training period?
Evidence? Sure: all notable pros use carbon blades
Btw i found zlf to be a lot more problematic than carbon. It plays really crappy with certain rubbers and i couldnt be arsed to test it more. To me it felt weird. I like the innerforce style carbon blade a lot more
Evidence? Sure: all notable pros use carbon blades
Btw i found zlf to be a lot more problematic than carbon. It plays really crappy with certain rubbers and i couldnt be arsed to test it more. To me it felt weird. I like the innerforce style carbon blade a lot more
In 2005 the ball was made of celluloid, the ball is a factor too.In 2005 8 of the top 10 Pros used all wood blades. Were all wood blades somehow better back then? [emoji2]
Sent from The Subterranean Workshop by Telepathy
Shibaev is not a notable pro? Neither is Lebesson or Gauzy? Xu Xin was virtually forced to use carbon and he used wood until very recently.
If you haven't tried blades with two outer layers of wood over the carbon layer, then I recommend you to try... It's just that I had the same opinion about carbon blades before I tried Innerforce Layer ALC, now I'm playing Apolonia ZLC (also uses Innerforce technology) which has "softer" feel than Innerforce Layer ALC and I quite happy with this blade (except the fact that I still haven't found any rubber that will play as good as tenergy 05 on this blade... tenergy is great, but the Price is killing me ).I hate the feel of carbon blades, hate it. But what to me signals playing with a frying pan, to others signals large sweet spot.
I’d like to share some comments from Chinese National team’s coach Qin Zhiqian, primary coach of Ma Long. When he was asked this question, he said right now it’ about 50/50 uses of wood vs carbon in chines national team. In the past definitely wood blades. He said the moment of carbon blades hitting the ball, they are faster than wood. But wood blades is a little bit more powerful and has better control. The players always try different blades and find whichever felt best.
Sorry my English is not that good and I just tried to translate what he said.
Evidence? Sure: all notable pros use carbon blades
Btw i found zlf to be a lot more problematic than carbon. It plays really crappy with certain rubbers and i couldnt be arsed to test it more. To me it felt weird. I like the innerforce style carbon blade a lot more
Evidence number 2
of all the carbon pro users - they are all pros
forum members are majority not pros
Can't compare apples with apples
Amateur/lower level players shouldn't be using fast equipment
i think your statement needs a certain premise. IF you play serious and take it for real and want to become as best as you can, a pro. Then i agree with you and equipment should very carefully adjusted to support someones developement and not hinder it.
But not everyone is playing with such goals in mind, maybe the vast majority of all Players worldwide are just so called "recreational" players, playing for fun and so on. For those i think it is ok to get whatever they want to play with
My attempt to summarise what I have learned from the many helpful responses to my original question. I shouldn't be thinking about carbon blades being "better" or "worse" but it's a question of individual preference. A player's preference may be influenced by the type of shots they tend to play and also their level. A follow up question, which hopefully will still be on-topic enough. Is the sport of table tennis helped by having so many different varieties of racket/paddle available? I did a quick tour of four major UK-based online retailers and they all had more than 100 different rackets. The greatest number was more than 200 with prices up to £330. Should we have (A) more standardisation, (B) more variety than there is now, or (C) just let the manufacturers do whatever they like?
IMHO, having a great variety of equipment choices is good for the players. However, there is one area where the current situation is completely inadequate - complete lack of standardized, objective and independently verifiable data on how rubbers and blades actually perform. The spin/speed/control/feedback/etc numbers provided by equipment vendors are meaningless and often almost seem random.
E.g., here is one webshop's rating of recent Stiga rubbers.
Speed/Control/Spin
Mantra M - 115/89/116
Genesis M - 114/91/115
Airoc Astro M - 114/90/114
Airoc M - 110/90/100
Calibra Tour M - 107/93/103
Magna Tx2 - 107/96/103
Can anyone explain to me how one is supposed to choose between the first 3 rubbers or the last 3 based on this? There is no way a human can tell the difference of less than 1% in any of these indicators. And yet online reviews by respected forum members claim dramatic increases in control/speed/spin as you go up the list. Or does anyone really believe that increase of "spin" from 103 to 116 justify doubling of the price?
Rant off.
I really think that ITTF must step in and officially test equipment as part of ITTF logo certification and publish relevant technical data.