Upcoming Joola X-plode Review

I am going to give this a go again with my new DotecHinoki blade :)

holda: i've had it for 3 months now and it's still grippy. slight rips near the edges but that's it.

saw this rubber today.hated the 50$ sticker price.i wonder if this rubber retains its grip for any longer time vs jo platinum or joola x-energy.i like tensors ,but they become worn so fast

Day 3: X-plode is a little softer than the day before. Loops are easily landing on the table; the rubber bites the ball and then slings it out. Countering is still really good with this rubber; it is linear and has good pace. Blocking is pretty good, balls will land where I want them to. Flipping is good since the medium-hard sponge and the grippy topsheet do lots of the work.

Compared to Vega Pro:
Speed
X-Plode > Pro
Spin
X-Plode ~ Pro (Need more time to decide)
Control
Pro > X-Plode

did your explode lose some speed after about a week or so?

This is a very good review so far ,I like the tone as well as the fact that your experience comes through your written words ,nice.

ive been playing with it on my BH, i havent noticed any fragility problems, this rubber seems very very mildly tacky in contrast to the ultra grippiness of tenergy 05, so that might be why people think it plays slightly better broken in, the rubber has good click sound, sometimes i do feel like it might stick too much because of the slight tacky, not a good thing for BH loop, when i put a sheet of plastic to protect rubber, the plastic slips right off of tenergy, the plastic cover sticks to the x-plode

To compare speed : Platin,Express1,X-Plode ?

the spin from xplode is so much better than any other tensor i've tried. paired with a YEO, it is absolutely lovely for the bh or the fh. the topsheet is very grippy but soft at the same time. this really helps with spin and loops but there is a drawback.

after nearly 3 months, i now see small chips on the edges. that's pretty much the only bad thing i've seen so far.

Someone can compare X-Plode vs Platin.

i've only had chances to do flat hits over the table with my bh on chance balls. so from that point of view it's pretty good. the rubber itself is only about medium speed (i like that) so if you feel like it lacks some umph then you'll just need to muscle it a little bit more.

on the fh side i have absolutely no problem looping very hard with it. the ball travels surprisingly fast even from 8-10 feet behind the table.

it's be decided. xplode is now my new permanent backhand rubber. paired with the YEO, it is truly a deadly weapon (for me).

speed wise, i find it just perfect...not too fast, not too slow. it allows me to pretty much block comfortable no matter what kind of ball comes my way. when i try to block strong loops, i miss sometimes but that's more my fault than anything else.

the sponge hardness is just great. i can counterloop so well with this it's scary.

i even managed to beat an 1800 player 3-0 earlier tonight =x. so yea, i think i've finally found something that truly works for me now =D

Here's an update to my strange X-plode experience. I bought some tear mender and reattached the rubber sheet to my blade and went to the club for a couple of hours tonight to hit with it. The good news is for the first half hour that Iplayed with it the playing characteristics were on par with what others had claimed about the rubber. I was happy to see that the throw angle was lower than tenergy and that I could smash with reasonable consistency, although my EGP is much better in this regard. However, after about 45 minutes I began to get some of the random responses - balls falling off the rubber while looping or leaving the rubber in a slow and dead fashion.

My best guess is that the humidity from the rainy weather along with me still not being able to achieve and optimal water glue job are the culprit to the problem. It seems that the X-plode rubber is sensitive to humidity at least more so than my EGP. At this point I don't think that the sheet is defective since it will perform normally for a while. I'm really tempted to clean off the blade and rubber and glue it on with rubber cement, because I never have any of these water glue problems when I use it. I don't play tournaments so the only reason I didn't use rubber cement initially is because I was afraid it might damage the rubber.

Thanks for the input guys, especially tpgh2k!

Thanks for the feedback guys, I'll try a new glue job and see if the results are different. It was a rainy day when I tried it, but my other rubbers Joola EGP and JO platin played normally.

T0 answer debraj's question: the throw was very non-linear.

In terms of the timing of my strokes, the other sheets on the blade were playing fine. I had another player try it (we're both in the 1800-2000 usatt range) and he had the same problems.

I'll see if I can get a good picture to post.

Blade wrote: The sponge is really, really porous� and kind of mushy. When I first tried to counter with it it was very slow. When I tried to loop with it the ball just fell into the net.� The top sheet is barely grippy. The throw seems totally erratic even while just counter hitting? It feels like the ball goes almost directly to the wood without really hitting into it. Are the sheets you other players are using like this?I usually use rubber cement to attach rubber to my blades, but I didn't want to take a chance on damaging this rubber so I used a water based glue� (some people say even the low voc content of rubber cement can damage these new rubbers).Is it possible it was just a bad glue job? I've never had any rubber play so strangely. I can send it back to the vendor for an exchange if I am willing to pay the shipping costs, but that's kind of a hassle. Should I try to glue it on again and give it another try or from what I've described does it sound like it's a defective sheet?Any thoughts would be appreciated!Blade

hmm...

did you mean the throw was unpredictable depending on the force you applied?...non-linear?