729 V-6 blade review

Blade name: V-6
Type: Aramid-Carbon (presumably a Xiom Stradivarius clone)
Marked: OFF+
Material: 5 plies of wood (Juniper?Limba?) plus 2 plies of Carbon-Arylate (Aramid)
Thickness 6.4 mm
Weight: 88 g
Handle: Flared, 100 mm long, 35 mm wide at the flared base

First impressions before I even started playing with it:

a) this is a decently manufactured blade... seems so at least

b) surface is relatively rough in places, the wood they used must be not  too expensive; same goes for the handle - you can see that they cut expenses there but overall quality is more or less OK

c) balance seems to be good, before the rubbers are put on it

d) bounce of the ball on a naked blade very similar to Strad, sound is very "pingy" (mind that it is a naked blade), more so than on an all-wood blade like Bty Grubba

Will post much more after one or two practices. I have sealed it using Minwax Wipe-On Poly (without triple sealing or drowning the blade in the sealer or anything like that), later today I will put some rubbers on it and will play with it a little bit tonight... Cannot play a lot since I have a tourney coming up on Sunday so I need to practice with my regular setup

asr1990 wrote: don't try it at all until after your tournament

Well, 5-10 minutes won't hurt... I am mostly just going to ask my friends to play with it a bit so I can record their comments.

I have put Dawei Inspirit 2.0 on FH, Juic Shenron 2.0 on BH - that's the combo I will be using on it for now...

chronos wrote: I didn't realize Strad is 5 ply wood, 2 carbon, just double checking that this is the case?  Is the strad thickness the same too? Looking forward to the review Jim, thanks!

No, two layers of Carbon-Aramid or Carbon-Arylate - not just Carbon. That goes for both Strad and V-6. Second short review follows very soon!

Stradivarius is 5 Wood, 2 Aramid Carbon = 7 ply total

Now - about my first 5 minutes of playing with the blade. Also two of the club members hit with it a few minutes as well. So this is 3 people's opinions somehow combined...

As I mentioned before, it has Dawei Inspirit 2.0 (regular but CTE treated) on the FH, and Juic Shenron 2.0 (EE2) on BH. Therefore this short review reflects qualities of both blade and the rubbers...

a) balance is really good, no problems with that whatsoever

b) it's softer than XS, dwell time is better, block is softer and the stopping effect is more prominent; regular block needs some work on its speed if you need it

c) minimum vibration and lot of control. I placed the balls returning the attacks/loops with much more ease than with my T-4 (which is not a surprise, T-4 is much stiffer and requires better touch)

d) lack of power from the 3rd zone (long distance). You need to apply yourself to shoot from there... could be rubbers, could be lack of heft, could be softness... or all of it together

e) I haven't done any smashing or fast blocking with it yet - haven't had the time

All in all seems an extremely good cheap C/A blade for control-loopers who are not heavily into really fast loop-attacks. I say that with reservations because I am pretty sure that if you put some faster rubbers on it then power-loopers would be happy to use this one as well.

Once again, it is hard to separate qualities of the blade and the rubbers. After I played with it some more, I intend to put other rubbers on V-6 and also try the same rubbers on Strad for comparison.

The first guy who tried it put away his old banged-up Sardius and played against me for about 10 minutes. He said he would gladly use this blade, possibly with some thinner rubbers (like 1.8) to make up for softness... but overall he had absolutely no objections against playing with it more and more. I told him it was $27 at Eacheng, and he was stunned.

The second player used it for less than 3 minutes and said it was too soft for him (he is one of the coaches who uses heavier blades with harder heavier rubbers; he is about 2400 rating) but commented that it seemed like a very decent blade for C/A-loving loopers.

More to follow!

Your Welcome JimT.  Nice review, how about I send you the V3, it is supposed to be a little faster than the V6?  I am waiting for PO to tune two 999 rubbers for the V3 (blue and orange sponge), but for some reason the seller hasn't responded to my emails, so I don't know when it will arrive.  I have CTE, but I want to use it for my regular set ups.

Pm me if you want me to send the V3.

Brainstorm69, thanks for the information on the PO, I will check with Walmart tomorrow.  I have already ordered two 45oz PO containers and they were supposed to arrive no later than the 26th, so I realy didn't want to get anymore, but oh well can't wait anylonger.

metalone wrote: Brainstorm69, thanks for the information on the PO, I will check with Walmart tomorrow.  I have already ordered two 45oz PO containers and they were supposed to arrive no later than the 26th, so I realy didn't want to get anymore, but oh well can't wait anylonger.   I weight the V3 today and it is heavy @98 grams.

metalone wrote: 98 grams is HEAVY!, but I will put rubbers on and check out how it plays.  It is rated as Off++, and if the blade is trule rated correctly, the weight will allow it to plow through a corn field. - LOL.

OK, but don't forget to do the review in a new topic! This one is mine! mine I say!

GenomicsKnight played a bit with V-6 before the tournament in Manchester, NH which both of us attended. I will PM him asking to post his impressions -  he didn't play a lot with it but he said he liked it.

I played with it another 10 minutes and I am more and more inclined to buy it for myself. The important thing to do will be to make sure that Eacheng will deliver the promised weight 87-88 g.

This is a very nice soft offensive blade (OFF but at the lower boundary of OFF spectrum; I would even happily recommend itto ALL+/OFF- people). I have no idea why it is marked OFF+ - could be just a marketing gimmick.

I even would go as far as to imagine that if I have played with it yesterday at the tournament then I might have won that only match I lost since that game required more looping and precision in placing the ball... I was getting tired, not using my T-4 to its full potential, not much hitting etc (all the usual excuses)...

Anyway, I will play more this week - on Wednesday and Friday, and the rest of the reviews will follow. Then it will go back to metalone, its rightful owner.

GenomicsKnight wrote: Maybe if we wait a little bit, they probably will start selling them on eBaby.  I saw one store is already selling C-1, C-2 and C-3 blades.

I saw that one too - I suspect that they started with C series because they are so ridiculously cheap (9.95 from Eacheng; they charge 29.95 in the US for them!)

But the one you mentioned - that is Eacheng themselves! They sell on eBay as china-friend

It's quite heavy too heavy for me.

Skyline wrote: It's quite heavy too heavy for me.

You can always tell them you want 85-86 g blade - they should have them, perhaps even a tad lighter. The average weight is 88 g but it seems that they are not very exact about it. metalone ordered V-3 which is supposed to be 92 g and received one weighing 98 g

Played another week with both V-6 and my Custom 1-ply Hinoki AW-8. What can I say... so far it seems that V-6 is a bit more versatile.

AW-8 at times seems too soft - however, the last time I tried it, I used it directly after playing two games with my old Galaxy T-4, and that was quite a contrast so it doesn't speak to its detriment at all. I shall play with AW-8 more - perhaps alternating it with V-6. Or I could go with my future Custom 1-ply Hinoki blade which I provisionally dubbed WR-9 (Western Red 9 mm)...

In any case, I know two more people outside of forum now who have tried V-6 (one in Israel, one in the US). They both are quite impressed and one of them has switched to playing it full-time (he might go back to his original blade but for now V-6 is his primary).

I started using Dawei IQ 1.8 on the FH of V-6 and it works good except for just a few errant shots on the topspin attack but they went away with some practice. It's a nice rubber but for me 1.8 is probably the thickest I will go with it.