Galaxy Mercury II

I was just letting you know because it's such a soft number :) who knows if that will work or not, I've never used such a soft rubber before on FH

dual700 wrote: 34 Deg M2 for my FH. I thought people use M2 as the FH??

I tried both 37 and 34 deg.

34 deg bottoms out even at low power, so you will have less spin, not more. I see it as a backhand rubber for beginners.

37 deg bottoms out in loops at medium-high power. I see it as a good backhand rubber, very spinny. Also very good for forehand but only for spin-oriented loopers with a fast blade. not for hitters.




Edited by seguso - 05/28/2011 at 10:30am

i compared 2 rubbers head to head on my F-1 blade, switching back and forth and judging the FH performance. And it was such a nice experience...

- mercury 2 - 37 degree black
- globe 999T with white (japanese?) sponge - black (marginally harder than mercury).. with one layer of Paraffin Oil tuning

both chinese, both black both tacky, both hardish sponged.... but playing characteristics markedly different.

M2-37 felt softer and i was getting the spin by digging the ball deep into the sponge. it was very like euro rubbers...even though it was tacky.
Speed was very nice... in fact i wasn't expecting this with the reviews here. And it was a little more cushioned safe feeling.
It was good on the table, but not as good as tuned 999T. Away from table it was little better ...but read on.

999T has evolved and is a much better rubber than the 999T i played 3 years back.
the first difference from M2 was the crisp feeling of a hard topsheet, giving more accurate feedback. less cushioning than M2, but i will argue do i need it close to table?
999T was as fast as M2 but may be a little faster on harder strokes. A well executed loop drive had way more punch than all the Tenergies , more like Palio Thors.
it was more little more reactive to incoming spin than the M2, but still less than tenergies.
Serves were awesome with 999T, but not bad with M2.
where it clearly outshines M2 is opening loop with significant power and spin. Now i know many guys here would feel M2 does that so well. Yes i agree, M2 37 degree is very good in opening loops; and even them 999T PO tuned is another step ahead.

i played with players mostly inferior to me...so i can't predict whether 999T will have issues while playing with higher rated players.

but the funniest thing happened when i decided to take 999T off the blade and paste my regular BH Palio Thor's on the other side of the Black M2 37 degree.

i played the first shot ... and i thought i may not have pasted the rubber correctly!!!
then i took it off and pasted again... and it was the same... M2 was a SLOTH. i struggled to get the ball to curve and hit the table!! it was miserable little piece of rubber....
i figured palio THors is way lighter than the 999T.. which probably resulted into this significant drop in speed due to lower weight of the racket.

i don't think M2 37 is viable for FH. may be i will try M2 41 sometimes... because otherwise it has some nice characteristics. For now i need to compare 999T with renanos hold head to head with a layer of PO; as a prospective FH rubber.

those who are struggling with H3 NEOs lack of speed, lack of pop, lack of tack etc etc... but still like that crisp hard topsheet feel and spin... should rather try 999T with a layer of tuning, instead of trying to re-tune H3 NEO. because that way it is way superior rubber than H3 NEO. Its a very mature topsheet, and responsive japanese sponge.

Which 999T are you using? globe or three nine and which hardness?. Also with the rubbers on the other side I'm not convinced it's all about weight, I think the hardness and type of sponge effects the way the blade works more than the weight itself, although hardness and weight are related :).

Edited by bluebucket - 05/05/2011 at 6:09pm

seguso.. i think 37 degree is pretty soft ... and with a tacky grippy topsheet if you make it any softer ... it is uncontrollable. 

Yes thee nine make what is basically the same topsheet  as globe apart from the brand name etc, same pimple structure etc but it's not made from the same rubber compound/ingredients so looks a bit different. Globe's 999 normally comes in a much softer sponge than the three nine, the standard issue three nine is 45 degree. There's a good picture of it from back in the day when the Chinese team used it...

Edited by bluebucket - 05/05/2011 at 6:40pm

The Mercury 2 topsheet is worth what I paid for the whole rubber. I think of the sponge comes as a bonus. Maybe the fellows that had their sponge crumble on them can reglue the top on to a different sponge and try it out.

You guys do realize that this is ONLY a $4 rubber, right??

dual700 wrote: You guys do realize that this is ONLY a $4 rubber, right?? Just checking!!!

debraj wrote: [QUOTE=sweetstrike] plus the glue they use is stronger than the sponges... so if you want to take out the topsheet... there will be pieces of sponge stuck on the pips.

ESN claims they are using 100% natural rubber for topsheets, while tenergies are 95% natural and 5% artificial (similar to Sriver I think). ESN topsheets are very grippy but they are more fragile than tenergy 05. Tenergy 05 seems to have just as much grip as the grippiest ESN sheets. I agree that ESN has the most elastic topsheets but maybe the 5% artificial rubber Butterfly uses is doing something with the underpip structure and making the interaction with the sponge a little more favorable? I'm also thinking that the 100% pure natural rubber claim is impossible, since at least 1 or 2% of that would need to be red or black colorant. If it was 100% rubber, it would have the color of a rubber band.

This is my source:
http://web.me.com/igsstern/tabletennis/Rubber_DB/Entries/2010/9/15_Butterfly_Tenergy_Series.html.
It is a great read on what Butterfly and ESN have been up to recently.

dual700 wrote: You guys do realize that this is ONLY a $4 rubber, right?? Just checking!!!

$6 to be exact.  Yes! 

debraj wrote: good read.. but that's it. It's someones site.. someone's opinions. that's it.  ESN claimed  to use 100% natural rubber only for the hexer generation rubbers. not earlier... and not for all rubbers later.

You are right, I can't find any claims of 100% natural rubber on any other ESN products.

edit: and whoops I went off topic again.


Edited by sweetstrike - 05/06/2011 at 5:54pm

Just found out that eacheng had the following hardness:

Edited by Antiq - 05/08/2011 at 11:31pm

Antiq wrote: Just found out that eacheng had the following hardness:   34, 36, 37, 38,  39, 40 , 41 degree, red or black.   Anybody tried the harder rubber, 38 to 41 degrees? Any review/comparision?