I changed my setup recently , from my Hurricane 8 on Forehand , MX-P on backhand to Karis H on forehand and Karis M on backhand on my regular ZJK ALC blade. Der_echte was kind enough to set me up with them . I have played around 4 - 6 hours on this setup and here are my first impressions ...
Karis H :
Karis H is definitely harder and faster than Karis M . Infact, it felt like exactly like what a harder and faster Karis M would feel like . Its linear , low throw and hard. If you take a compact swing and connect properly you can blow it past your opponent. I was able to do this consistently yesterday when I kept serving no spin or corkscrew to my opponent and made a third ball attack. Countering topspins are easy and there is no surprise or rather if you compare with other non-tacky modern rubber, its surprising how you can predictably counter fast loops , you won't get the feeling that you made the correct swing and failed because of catapult .
Even though its not known for its spin, I was able to extract spinny loops from it and even blew a few over the table loops past my opponent when I made the right footwork and followed through with the stroke. My partner was very surprised that I was able to make that stroke on a fairly fast , low and barely half long side spin serve .
On short balls , of course its not a exact replacement of Hurricane or tacky chinese rubbers but I believe it won't be as bouncy as tenergy 05 and should be easier to control . The flicks, when I was in time and did the correct form just blew past my opponent.
Karis M :
Changing from MX-P to Karis M took a little adjustment. I was not as good on my backhand as I would like to be on the first day, mainly because I was playing with MX-P and then tenergy 05 on Samsonov Alpha when I ruined my main setup.
However, yesterday and that was my second day with Karis M , I was almost 80-90% back to what I could do with MX-P and I think it would just become better from here. I could make enough spin on my banana or just plain flicks and topsin loops . Blocking with both M and H was not difficult at all and pretty comfortable.
Summary : I am going to stick to this setup for the time being. the plan is to experiment a little bit with boosting on a Provincial Hurricane 3 on my Long 5 for a bit to figure out what I want for my FH , Boosted H3, H8 or Karis H. Will keep the crew posted ...