Carbonado 145 - Unboxing and review

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   A few notes on the Carbonado 145:
I tried a 89g Legend FL. I put on a MX-P (max) on FH and T05 (2.1) on BH. I'll mainly compare it to the ubiquitous Viscaria here

1st Impressions: the blade has exceptional balance. Generally, I find set-ups > 185g heavy. This set-up was 192g and just fine for me. As always, Stiga Legend FL handles are great and this one is no exception. 

My initial expectations (before testing) were that the blade would have that typical carbon pingy feel, have low dwell (as carbon is just behind the outer limba layer) and that it would be fast.

However, they were wrong. The blade has a great feel - better than a Viscaria and I preferred the feel to my IF-ALC as well. I think having Ayous as the 2nd wood layer (rather than limba) provides better 'catch' & makes the blade more linear as compared to blades with limba-limba combo. It also has very good feedback even though it does not vibrate much. It is about as stiff as a Viscaria. Or maybe good feel is just a general Stiga blades thing.

The blade has very good dwell - surprisingly more than the Viscaria. It also beats Viscaria handily in the grip department. Because of both these attributes, lifting backspin is very easy - easier than using the Koto-based Viscaria. It also has a good arc for mid-distance play.

Speed-wise, it is about as fast as Viscaria from mid-distance. At the table, perhaps it is a shade slower.

In the short game, I greatly prefer the 145 to the Viscaria because of the better grip (limba) and better & clear feedback of the 145.

In short, it is a very good blade - I prefer this over the Viscaria (with the plastic balls, the grip of the limba-based blades give them a big advantage over koto-based ones so long as the blade isn't too slow) & the Nittaku Acoustic Carbon (which is another limba-based carbon blade albeit slower and with too much of a head-heavy blade balance). Whether it spins better than Viscaria depends on the stroke in question.

It is not too difficult to switch from a Viscaria family blade to this (as it at a similar stiffness & speed level)

Any negatives relative to the Viscaria?: not sure if this is one but there's no absorbing ALC layer here, so on hard hits, you don't have that absorbing feel due to Arylate, just the Ayous 'catch' (which I actually prefer). Of course, the big negative is that you might be among the 5% affected by Stiga QC issues in your blade but if not, then you have something good.

I'm happy my Clipper wood is up for sale - I prefer this blade to that one.

If you like this blade and would prefer carbon as an inner layer, & limba-ayous as the outer 2 layers + a ayous core, then the two blades that come to mind are Hurricane Long V (except that it has ALC instead of Carbon & it is bigger & heavier) and Donic Waldner Senso Carbon (but I've heard that it is head-heavy).

Edited by slevin - 04/16/2015 at 5:39pm