I played short pips backhand (2+mm sponge) for 2 years, then inverted, then long pips (the last 8 weeks). I also have a medium pips rubber for comparison.
What is happening is that the sponge allows the ball to sink in a little which provides some spin. So with the OX rubber I have no grip on the ball and nopspin (top spin on pips) is more difficult. With a 2mm sponge on short pips, the rubber plays almost like inverted (the modern ones like Nittaku Moristo SP or Yinhe Uranus Pro medium sponge). While you can't do a backhand topspin with a closed blade like with a gippy inverted rubber, you can still get some spin but less to no spin inversion (which requires no grip like anti-spin).
So with long pips with no sponge, spin inversion is larger but getting grip for nopspin or chop is hard. I don't like the feeling (like hardbat). With 0.8mm or 1mm sponge, I feel I have a little grip and the rubber plays closer to medium or shirt pips.
Also note that a 1mm sponge is about 20g lighter than an inverted rubber with max sponge (50g / sheet). OX is even lighter, maybe another 20g (and harder to glue).
I haven't tried "special" long pips with a purpose as described in
https://ttdd.eu/ where they have a story for each rubber. If you want to try various options a cost-effective way is:
- Yinhe Uranus Pro 2mm medium sponge red short pips (the soft sponge plays very different so don't use it unless you want more sensitivity but less control)
- Dawei 388C-1 Medium Pips, 1.3mm sponge
- Dawei 388D-1 0.8mm or 1mm sponge long pips
- Dawei 388D-1 OX sponge long pips
They are about $12/sheet on AliExpress/GHStore or some other store.
For the long pips I also tried the Victas Curl P3V, Neottec Tokkan (from TT11), Sword Venom Long Pips 1mm Sponge, Sword Venom Long Pips OX, Yinhe Qing 0.7mm sponge. They are more like $20-$30/sheet. $12 RITC 729 755 Mystery III LP Red, 1.0mm, H38 is on order. They are all pretty close as far as I am concerned if they have a 0.8-1mm sponge. There are differences but not big enough to matter for me right now.
So for me there is a tradeoff in TT rubbers within the legal choices. I get more degrees of freedom having a 1mm sponge long pips backhand with some added cost (2x strokes when twiddling, loss of hard topspin on backhand without twiddling, but good control on backhand, easy to return serves). I think I can do better than with two wing looping with this setup. Also I really like defending.
Also I tried 5 different blades, for now & tournaments I use the slowest I have (Victas Swat, 1150Hz). I can play all the way to the 1400Hz Sanwei Fextra or 1350Hz Yinhe Pro 05 but not in a tournament, they are too fast right now.
Also getting the technique took me 8 weeks, 2 hours/day machine & playing. This is a big investment especially if twiddling is the goal like Ni Xia Lian.