Choosing new blade

[OhWell]

Carl, what weight range do you find makes for the best SPW?

 

[thomas.pong]

Or

OSP Virtuoso Plus

Hi Carl,

I see you tend to recommend the Virtuoso Plus rather than the Virtuoso OFF- and was wondering why. I just ordered the OFF- after reading your and others' reviews of both. I know you have a clear preference for the Plus, do you find the OFF- to be to slow compared to like blades?

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

Carl, what weight range do you find makes for the best SPW?

Blade weight is really a person by person thing. Years ago, a friend who had tennis elbow made me think that blades which were heavy were not good. At the time I had a 95 gram Clipper that I loved. For a while after giving up that Clipper, I tried to find blades that weighed less and never found I liked them as much. Der_Echte got me to realize just how much I like blades that are on the heavy side.

But for each person, optimal weight is going to be different. I am decently strong. As a kid I was swinging a 44” baseball bat. 95 grams still feels light to me. But for each person it is a personal choice that the person kind of has to sort out for himself.

Hi Carl,

I see you tend to recommend the Virtuoso Plus rather than the Virtuoso OFF- and was wondering why. I just ordered the OFF- after reading your and others' reviews of both. I know you have a clear preference for the Plus, do you find the OFF- to be to slow compared to like blades?

Nah. I love the the V-. But for each person, I read something about the person. I would rather recommend something the OP will be happy with and use for a while.


Sent from The Subterranean Workshop by Telepathy

 

[Basten4]

Hi All,

So ordered and received a blade with rubber...
Maybe I was wrong, but I was going for an OFF+ wooden blade with good control and large sweet spot. Did not want to buy more expensive rubbers yet, but wanted to get something with good spin and control. Maybe not too fast to offset the blade speed.

Got myself a DHS Hurricane Long 3 blade with Xiom Vega Pro and Xiom Vega Europe.

Going to try it out tomorrow. Its going to be interesting

 

[chintanmashroo]

Good luck


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Konrad Bak]

Too fast too furious.
I will Help you
Dont open xiom vega eu.
Too soft
A lot of catapult
You cant handle on off+ blade
Maybe 1,8 will be Ok
But I think you bought max sponge
So go buy Dhs h3 neo.

 

[Basten4]

So played with my new paddle for the 1[SUP]st[/SUP] time today.

The speed of the blade is amazing!!! Took me about 10-15 minutes to adjust somewhat to the speed of it, and then it started getting better and better. Definitely not a blade/paddle that you want to use close to the table. Mid to Far distance for sure. Short game definitely will take some getting used to.

The paddle is not heavy, and with Xiom Vega rubbers, which are fairly light, the weight of my paddle is 181g. Blade felt just a bit top heavy, but just a bit (might try out tape). Handle was comfortable for my hand.

Rubbers are spinny as hell, but I liked Xiom Vega Europe less. Its too loopy, and while it gives you great spin, sometimes the arch on the ball is way too high, and I felt it is harder to control. Xiom Vega Pro seemed a bit more direct, while still giving quite a lot of spin and to me it felt a bit better. I feel like blocking and chopping are a lot better with Vega Pro than Europe as well. A lot more control.

I quickly switched to Pro on FH and Europe on BH. Europe felt good on looping and smashing backhands, great speed (probably blade) and decent control, but I need to work on reducing the arch, and short game and pushes.
However, Pro probably felt a bit better on backhand as well. I was switching them from time to time in the 1[SUP]st[/SUP] hour to figure out what is better where.

Not sure if it is rubber or the blade (if you do not consider me), but I felt that with old paddle my short game was much better. Need to work on it big time. Think Europe on BH didn’t help it much. For about an hour today I played with a guy who has great quality and variations on his serves. Last time I played him with old paddle I beat him 2:1 when I got used to returning his serve. Today I could not return his serve, doing it mostly with Europe and a new blade.

But overall, amazing experience today, lots of fun, lots of good loops and smashes, created a lot of problems for some players, some very good points played that I could not have done with my old paddle.

So now, to everyone who said that I need a different blade, this one will be too fast, you will not have enough control, and so on… Not saying that you were wrong, but after playing with it once, here is what I can say:

1. This blade is definitely very fast, and I did lose a bit of control. However, I am saying this after playing 2.5 hrs, so I am sure I need to get used it more.
2. With a lot of speed I could focus more on technique, feel and placement, rather than focusing on power to get the ball over the net.
3. Loosing a bit of control forces you to focus more on technique, which is not a bad thing, right?
4. With my previous paddle I had a feeling that I am better than my paddle allows me to play (which might be absolutely wrong). However, with this paddle I KNOW it is better than me. So if there is a problem, I know for sure it is me and I need to improve my technique.

So to wrap things up, my new paddle, even though too good for me now, motivates me to work hard and focus more on my technique, which can’t be a bad thing.

 

[Basten4]

Too fast too furious.
I will Help you
Dont open xiom vega eu.
Too soft
A lot of catapult
You cant handle on off+ blade
Maybe 1,8 will be Ok
But I think you bought max sponge
So go buy Dhs h3 neo.

You might be right about Xiom Vega Europe. But I am going to keep playing with it for the next few weeks and then we will see. Maybe Vega Pro is the way to go on both sides. Maybe something completely different.