Darker 5 CNF

[JustANoob]

Just want to confirm, it's core and surface are hinoki, right ?

 

[SamTheMan]

Just want to confirm, it's core and surface are hinoki, right ?

Yes it is

 

[MK73]

So, I must try it more to get to know the blade. I can only give a very brief first impressions.

Hey Sam, did you play a little bit more with it now? I'm still very keen on hearing your thoughts on the blade. 😊

 

[SamTheMan]

Hey Sam, did you play a little bit more with it now? I'm still very keen on hearing your thoughts on the blade. 😊

Yes, I have tried it some more. It’s a nice blade! But I’m not ready to experiment during season. I don’t want to make the effort to adapt to it now, while I have league games.

As I stated before, the speed and the arc are similar to my main blade Latika. The big difference is the softness of the hinoki (duuh!)😝. It took me a very long time to adapt to the Latika from the Korbel because of the harder feel and shorter dwell time on the Latika. Now it’s the other way around. With the Classic 5 it’s most noticeable on the backhand. Thin brushing contacts on the backhand goes in the net because of the soft hinoki. It feels like the ball stays on the racket much longer instead of shooting out. Open ups on backhand forced me to play with more force but resulted in faster and spinnier shots. On the forehand it’s much easier for me to control the angles needed. Drives goes fast, thin brush loops goes slow and spinny. And all the shots between like loop or loop-drive are easy to do.
TLDR, it plays fast at thicker contacts and plays slower and spinnier at thin contacts compared to traditional blades. This long dwell time is more noticeable with this blade, compared to two other hinoki blades that I have tried before.

Now I have 2 old sheets of 09c on it, with several layers of glue and booster. The 90 gram Classic 5 CNF increased to 198 grams! Which makes it a bit head heavy. I will put some new rubbers on it in the future to decrease the weight and to try it out with the fresh rubbers the blade deserves.

 

[MK73]

I have bought one myself now and had the opportunity to play with it for two long sessions. First of all the Classic 5 CNF is a kind of hinoki hybrid blade, a bit like the Darker Esteem. The core and the top plies of the Classic 5 are made of hinoki, the second ply is CNF and the medial ply is some kind of other wood. I don’t know which exactly. The hinoki core is much much thicker compared to my other Darker blades. It also plays much faster and feels less soft than the 5P and 7P Carbon. It is also heavier (mine weighs 91 gramms). It doesn‘t have the typical soft Darker hinoki feel to it. However, probably due to the outer CNF layer it has a really big sweet spot and despite beeing a fast blade, it is very controllable. All in all a very interesting blade. I makes fun to play with it.