Thanks for the update and for sharing your experience. I bought a sheet of Rxton 3 Blue during the aliexpress sale.
How do you think it would play on flexible soft outer blades? I was going to try it on either a Nittaku Acoustic or Sanwei Fextra as a BH rubber but now am thinking that might not be ideal based on your impressions. Sounds like this is more of a FH rubber and might be slow on my blades.
The R3Blue is right on the border with FH vs BH. If you hit your BH shots/drives/loops pretty hard, it's just springy enough to act as a BH rubber, even when new (it's more BH friendly once it's played in). If however you lack a bit of power on your BH, then you'd probably prefer it on FH, as to get the best from the rubber, you have to hit hard and really engage the sponge... It then rewards you with huge speed, spin,a very low throw angle, and truly surprising levels of control, even at high speed.
Being so tacky it's also better suited to an active/attacking short game as opposed to a passive short game. Try gentle pushing with this against heavy spin, and the ball isn't going anywhere near the table unless you angle the blade a LOT to correct for incoming spin.
On a soft flexy blade, IMO the rubber should go reasonably okay, but not brilliant. The sponge is pretty hard - about 40° Chinese, or 52° Euro, which means it's almost impossible to bottom out - which is really its greatest strength. The top sheet meanwhile is thick, dense, hard, and tough as an old boot when new, with shorter pimples to compensate. A flexier blade will absorb more of the ball's impact, and rob you of the rubbers top gears. Plus that beautiful, low, headlong-hurtling throw angle will kick up more due to the flex. It may also be a bit harder to control your shots at full speed... But hey, who knows... really it all depends on the blade, (I'm not personally familiar enough with the blades you cited to comment with any authority sorry... though if you have an outer-carbon blade hanging around somewhere, maybe try it on that first).
Softer outers (like the flexy blade) will also absorb a little of the force during driving, and may possibly rob you of a little bit of high speed control, comparatively speaking.
With the R3 Blue, you just don't need that extra dwell time you get from a flexier blade... The sponge and topsheet together are really a very highly tuned (ie: I mean adjusted, not boosted) combination hardness-wise -- they were just made for each other. (I get the feeling Loki prototypes and refined this thing to death before releasing it).
For me personally, the sponge and top sheet together provide *just* the right levels of impact resistance vs catapult-effect to provide both brilliant speed and spin *and* great control during hard hitting.
Furthermore, if you DON'T boost the rubber, but play it in instead, the the topsheet and sponge both wear in *at the same rate*. After 15-20 hours of hitting, you'll have a slightly softer and more springy rubber on your hands, but it'll still have that brilliant balance in hardness between sponge and topsheet, so it's performance doesn't drop away nearly as quickly.
