@Klue did you end up switching?
I’m near the end of my research for a senior member at my club who due to declining vision requires a similar/same feel to YE but with a bigger sweetspot. We used brand new balls and their FH grouping was indeed quite scattered, especially considering their technique is solid.
They are one of those unsung heroes that is the backbone of every successful club - volunteers their time to organise and run social competitions, cleans up after people, resolves disagreements and corrects bad attitude. It’s my small way of giving back and a couple of us will pool money to gift once I get an indication of which direction they will lean.
Anyway these are the options and my notes in case it’s helpful for anyone else that stumbles upon this thread like I have:
Yasaka Extra 3D - exact same composition, though with addition of 3 slits above the handle giving more flexibility and catapult speed. Even though the marketing suggests a bigger sweetspot vs YE, common sense suspects there should not be a great difference, it’s probably moved the balance a bit more toward the tip and/or the flexibility has improved dwell which may feel as though there has been a change in sweetspot during friction type shots ie topspin looping. I think in smashing, touch and block shots it’ll probably seem the sweetspot is reduced with the more flexible nature.
Donic Defplay Senso - same Anigre outer ply but with a much larger headsize seeing it’s meant to be a modern defenders blade. We might just purchase this as well seeing it’s so cheap. My thinking is ~10% larger surface area should correspond with the same increase in sweetspot, though the dead spots remain at the outer edges. It’s less efficient to say carbon where the sweetspot enlarges across the same surface area toward the edges.
Yasaka Extra Offensive - construction similar in that it is 5 ply all wood, though the top ply changed to the slightly harder and definitely more elastic Walnut. The feel would be too much of a change but this upgrade path I can see working for juniors or intermediates aiming to progress to their next level of development.
Yasaka Ma Lin Soft Carbon - exact same construction as YE but with the addition of 2 thin layers of soft carbon. This one looks to be the winner as the sweetspot should be greatly increased without changing the overall dimensions or baseline feel by having the same wood plies. Also being from same manufacturer the tiny details should remain familiar like the handle dimensions, glue and how the wood is dried and prepared.
