Best Blade for RPB style

Calling all RPB players, especially experienced ones with high ranking.

What is the best blade for RPB have you used?
How heavy is it including rubbers attached on both sides?
Also, how long have you playing RPB style? Are you a convert from handshake style?

For purely RPB, Hurricane King 3 was the easiest for me by far.  Nice medium hard feel and thin at 5.8mm, paired well with Tenergy and not too head heavy in an 86g blade with a hurricane on the FH.  However I found the blade's FH side to be a bit too weak in the penhold version and found myself smashing instead of looping to get some pace on the ball (I'm certain the shakehand version is different though).

Edited by schen - 01/29/2015 at 4:04am

Thin flex blades are in general easy to do RPB at least when you first started. As your skills improve, you may have preferences to different blade stiffness

I started with YO40 when first started RPB and moved to yasaka soft carbon (ma lin sc), yasaka carbon (ma lin carbon), YEO. Indeed they are all good for RPB. But RPB is only ONE part of one's PH style game.

My favourite Cpen ... IF ZLC.

HK2 and HH2. Still, the handle of all pen blades is too short for RPB. 88-90 should be the new standard.

Hi hhca,

What blade do you move into, after yasaka?

YEO is significantly faster, harder, and stiffer.  MLC is softer, thinner, and more flexible with less speed and more control in my opinion.  MLC is much more forgiving.

hhca wrote: wankhao wrote: Hi hhca, What blade do you move into, after yasaka? after yasaka blades, I played the following: 1. butterfly primorac carbon 2. stiga carbo 7.6 3. chinese sanwei 1091A soft carbon 4. nitakku lialox 5. cc5 6. cc7 7. maple VII 8. clcc 9. DHS 506 10. hayabusha Zx 11. kanaph 12. arirang

Out of the 12, which one do you feel most at home with playing RPB, not TPB?

hhca

r u kidding me? out of 12 blades, none of them can satisfy you?

Yes, how many cpens have you tried/used.
Which one is your pick?
Which one will you keep?

Dear Wankhao,

I was a convert from shakehands to rpb style from 2000 to 2005.  For sponge play I used a Nittaku CP-548 blade with Donic Supersonic rubber both sides (both discontinued), and for hard rubber play a custom made Super Hock 6-ply blade affixed with British Leyland rubber made for me by Don Varian.

There are reverse penhold backhands and there are other reverse penhold backhands.  Do you use your rpb to loop from mid-distance mostly crosscourt, and can you counterdrive and block and flip with your rpb?  Which type of rpb you predominantly use might have a bearing on what type of blade you chose.

I am currently looking at the Paddle Palace catalog for Winter 2013/2014.  The Yasaka Ma Lin Extra Offensive, at $51.95 might be a good bet and should not put too much of a burden on your pocket book.  As of February 2015, it might of course cost more.  You might think about the Yasaka Ma Lin Carbon, with 5 plies of wood and 2 of carbon, listing for a mere $72.95, but maybe a bit more now.

As for choice of rubbers, I haven't a clue, as it's been nine and a half years since I last played in a competitive event, the Ohio State Closed.  So many rubbers have come out since then that I've no idea which would and which wouldn't work for the rpb (damn good stroke); I wish I could do it now, but due to a twice broken right arm and dislocated right shoulder nine years ago which pretty much killed my righty TT game, I'd have to learn to play lefty.  Fortunately, I'm somewhat ambidexterous, but being ambidexterous and being competitive are two different things.

Happy rpbing.


Edited by berndt_mann - 02/04/2015 at 11:40pm