Different (fiber) blade philosophies

[golden_son]

Fextra is interesting in that it doesn't really conform to the sort of rule you've laid out, @Tyce. It's solid enough to play harder Chinese rubbers, and yet it also plays well with Euro rubbers. I recently bought one (89g) and glued Joola Rhyzen Fire & Ice to it (47° and 42° respective Euro-style rubbers) and it plays very naturally. It feels not terribly different from my inner-carbon Yinhe Pro 05, which likewise I play with Euro rubbers but is "designed" for Chinese provincial players. Even my coach was impressed with the combination.

My sense is that there are probably some blades that lean more in one direction or the other as far as rubber pairings, but it's probably not black-and-white and in the end it's down to personal feeling anyway.

 

[Archosaurus]

Contact time/dwell tends to be exaggerated - we're talking 1-2ms. It's also unlikely that blade flex + restitution occurs within that contact window to contribute to any sort of catapult (throw is different). A blade that flexes too easily is actually more lossy and would be slower.

I think these things primarily change what you feel, but what you feel doesn't change the shot as you're making it, it just calibrates your brain for the future.

Experimental results I've seen suggest under 1ms for fairly low speed impacts. Maybe it's higher in higher speed impacts that are really tangential. Either way might as well be instant. You only see the compression in ultra high speed footage slowed down thousands of times.

I'm gonna get flamed to hell and back but it's 99% the after-effect of the shot and what you feel in the hand from the handle pitching and rolling and vibrating, and nothing to do with the shot itself other than the coefficient of restitution and maybe throw angle if the blade face does deflect enough.