Finally had a chance to have another brief hit with Loki's new Kirin 1 rubber, and the marginally faster version (just!) in the Kirin 3....
...and I gotta say, they're really not too bad at all for the money. That goes for both the Kirin 1 and 3.
They're both weird to use... But they're not bad rubbers at all. I would never use one during comp... But I also really kinda like them... The Kir1 in particular really grabbed me, which is odd, as it's the cheaper and slightly slower of the two
What both these rubbers drove home to me more than anything else (in flaming 20-foot high letters at that), is:
A -- a lot of people (ie: me) use tensor rubbers so much, they are actually at risk of forgetting how to play the game without their addictive speed boost;
B -- it is still actually possible to play a surprisingly damaging game (at club level at least) using completely linear non-tacky rubbers with no catapult effect whatsoever.... and:
C -- It is still the player and their sense of touch that matters most in producing spin, more than any other factor (no matter how much Butterfly / Andro / DHS etc would like us to think otherwise in order to sell us their next big thing)
Both these rubbers are IMHO, utterly brilliant technique coaches.
15 minutes of FH/BH driving and looping with a red Kirin 1 rubber in Max sponge on a light ALL ++ limba-outer blade, easily gave me as much constructive feedback and improvement of my sense of touch, as I would otherwise have received in five or six coaching sessions...
...but I'm getting ahead of myself a bit. Let's get back to the rubbers themselves, and the unique experience of using them, after years of me immersing myself in an insular, EJ-driven, tensor-sponge Disneyland.
Both the Kir1 and Kir3 share the same top sheet are true grippy rubbers in the purest sense -- no pseudo stickiness or hints of hybrid pretensions here.
The top sheets aren't remotely tacky or sticky at all -- they are however both quite firm, moderately grippy, very high quality, and from the look of them, extremely hard wearing. Not only are these things cheap to buy, I suspect with a little bit of TLC, a set will last you for years.
The sponge on both rubbers isn't anything to write home about: there's straight forward thick, hard, cake-ish traditional sponge on the Kir1, while the Kir3 sports some really firm, black-carbon sponge that looks like it's taken directly from a T3 or Rxton 1 special, but actually isn't (this stuff is actually a fair bit firmer than the T3.
Most relevantly, and most importantly, both these rubbers are as linear in their qualities as linear gets. They do you no favors at all... Which frankly is their greatest strength.
There's not the faintest hint, whiff or skerrick of catapult effect or factory boosting to either rubber -- frankly they make a 2.0mm Mark V look like a T05.
"So they're utterly slow and lifeless then?", I hear you ask.
Well, not really... Actually in some ways, they're just the opposite. That's what I mean by weird.
Thee rubbers are only slow and lifeless, if you play them like a tensor.
By this I mean, don't even *think* about burying the ball into to the sponge, in search of some latent catapult effect or lazy-arse spin creation, to add venom to the ball.
Every single time you do this, both these rubbers actually feel and perform like (pardon the expression) ...complete arse.
Do this with them, and you get precisely nothing back. No spin, no speed, no control, no quality, no arc, no deceptive flight... nothing whatsoever.
In the process, they frankly feel like playing with a wet flour sack, or a lumpy sandbag when hitting the ball this way. The ball barely limps over the next, as bland, lifeless, ugly, and distasteful as some stale, week old cheese sandwiches.
So you try hitting harder.... But somehow all you get is even more 'nothing' than you got earlier, if such a thing is possible. It's almost like the rubber gets *worse* the harder I swung it.
It's at this point you started glaring at these rubbers and their hard, silicone-like, moderate grip top-sheets, and grainy, lifeless leather-like sponge, and you start asking yourself 'why you ever bothered trying these utter pieces of **** in the first place'.
Or at least certainly that's what I did, the very first time I tried them. But the next time I tried them, they made me change my mind, from sheer revulsion, to utter confusion.
So I decided to give them one more go.
This time around, I remembered something someone once muttered at me long, long ago, about how to create spin, you're actually supposed to 'brush' (?) the ball a lot as you swing... or something Iike that.
So you then close the blade a bit more and give it a try, by slicing at the ball I stead of mashing it into the sponge... and immediately both rubbers come alive.
Ball speed picks up massively through the air, the ball starts kicking off the table strongly, and the two combined turn your previously soggy flour sack, into a reasonable all-round rubber with some actual attacking potential.
So then you try closing the blade angle even more, and slicing through the ball at increasingly narrow angles, fruit-ninja style -- all the while expecting the ball to slip badly and drop towards your side of the table...
...but somehow, amazingly...it doesn't. Instead your drives, chops, and fan shots, start getting even more quality on them.
And in the process you also twig to the fact, that these rubbers are so consistent, predictable and linear in their impact responses, that if the blade were a razor, you could probably give the ball a shave and haircut over the length of a match, and never once draw blood in the process.
And from that point onwards, that's the point that you start having fun with these things. If you happen to have a mirror handy in your club, glance at it at this point, and notice your own form. In my case, when I did this, I realized I was actually showing some really good form on my bh drive.
That's why I say they a great technique coach. Use them right, and they are a very capable rubber.
This is also the ONLY way they are capable... When you're swinging them properly, and focusing on getting great brushing contact and generating quality spin with EVERY stroke.
The second you forget to do this, that's when they start to suck again.
I kind of suspect, that if the T05 or speed glue were never actually invented, and the whole TT world hadn't ended up going nuts over tensor-style sponge and hybrid top sheets, then ALL of us might be playing with rubbers like these.
Rubbers which have no catapult effect, no easy spin, no rewards for lazy technique, and only actually perform properly when the person using them does.
Make no mistake, these rubbers aren't world-beaters... Frankly they're barely even club-level-bully beaters in the hands of most players out there.
But that's only because the average club player typically doesn't have perfect technique, and aren't using rubbers like the Kirin 1 and 3, that actually force you to work for a living, and pay attention to maintaining and perfecting your technique if you want to actually get anywhere with them.
For these reasons you really shouldn't buy some expecting to get a T05 level rubber for literal chump change, or a rubber that will do all the work for you. These aren't those kinds of rubbers.
They are however (just like a lot of Loki rubbers) very good value for money, enormous fun to use, and are worth keeping around on a spare blade somewhere, and going back to visit from time to time, like they were a really good lifelong friend.
Because just like a good lifelong friend, there rubbers are not going to lie to you.
They won't tell you that you are better at this game then you really are, in order to try and protect your feelings.
They are going to do you no favours, they point out every little flaw in your game, force you to actually play properly, and give you decent honest feedback on when you get things right... Just like a decent coach would.
For this reason they are the perfect learning rubber for absolute beginners, intermediate players, all those on a tight budget, and all those who aren't afraid to pick up a slower workhorse of a rubber, in order to detect and correct a few technical faults in their swing.
TL
R... They're not brilliant rubbers, but they are however a pretty good low-cost technique coach that doesn't mind living in the murkier, dustier corners of your TT bag, just in case you need it someday.
So that the Kir1 and 3: ...not high performing rubbers by a long shot, but also not a bad way at all to learn what high performance stroke-making actually looks like.
Highly recommended for kids, beginners, teachers, and masochistic technique perfectionists everywhere.
