From that point I knew that there are rubbers special-made for the pro's and rubbers of lower quality for consumers.
Bloody H*ll BTY is THE BEST at doing this sort of thing.
The Japanese stocks with JP serial numbers (both blades and rubbers) are much coveted here in taiwan.
Why? Because they rarely deviate from the quality of their original designs.
Now I know BTY has the BEST QC and Machining technics of all blade makers but then again the will always be pieces that just..doesnt feel right, or is flawed (I recently bought a piece of T80. the surface simply does not grip the ball at all. I got a free replacement from the shop. It was SEA stock)
This kind of stuff wont show up until youve reached the stage where you actually started playing and in most cases, cant refund the product.
So by buying a brand new piece of product that you know comes from Japan will give you the peace of mind knowing that it cant go too bad, right?
Also, it was proven by a taiwanese collector who bought 3 Vis STs from the same batch of Taiwanese stock and another 3 from a random equipment shop in Japan, that the taiwanese stock actually does not feel as powerful. He had a rating of 2390 back in those days so I trust his feelings.
They simply keep the good stuffs in Japan and give the cherry picked pieces to their sponsored players. Now I am not sure if other companies do the same thing as to keeping the good stuffs in their home nation, but I am sure that every one of these manufacturers does the latter.
I had this classmate back in Singapore who was a provincial u-15 team player, coming to singapore with full ride scholarship
He brought a Tube Alu with him, which he said was issued to him from the team. He was forced to replace it with a consumer one when that blade's core gave way due to the hefty amount of training we had. He sold it off after one single day going for a custom BTY. He said, actual quote, translated from chinese, "That new tube just does not have the strength as the old one."
