Please help me pick my first good racket

I used to play a lot and am getting back into the game after a several year layoff.  I live in a small town without a club or people to get advice from and want to get a good blade try to start working on my game again.  I like to hit topspin off both sides and at this point, am more interested in spin and control than blazing speed.  I looked through the Paddle Palace catalog for blades and rubber with good speed and control numbers.  What do you think of the combination below?  I realize I don't know much about the modern game and don't want to do something dumb.

Katsumi Basic blade - (speed/control = 86/78)
Rubber - Juic Shenron 2.0 on both sides  (speed/spin/control = 9.1/9.2/8.4)

thanks in advance.

Wayne_TN

don't worry, I know what brand that blade is from 

I, and probably a lot of others, would agree that the Paddle Palace catalog is horrible place to look at for a first setup.  Everything is just very vague numbers and flowery descriptions.

Try the Yasaka Extra or Stiga OC CR non-WRB (not available at paddlepalace) and some sort of Butterfly Sriver on both sides.  This is general a setup you can't go wrong with and will take you decently far.  Not to mention, it's a good price.

729 FX on the FH sounds great to me also. Cheap slow and good but still capable of playing to a very high level :). I wouldn't complain about Sriver El on the BH either. As for blades well I think you can do a lot better that the Stiga OC CR, it's really nothing special, rubbers are easy to recommend but blades are a bit more personal, With 729 FX I think a medium speed (OFF-) carbon or other composite blade is the go, that's the combo I used to use back in the day and it worked well. I actually used a faster blade than that, but that might be too much for you so it's best to go a notch slower just to be sure

Edited by nicefrog - 07/08/2010 at 12:13am

With young kids I always start them on "slow" Chinese rubber on the FH, it forces them to learn to swing properly, why worry about teaching a kid how to swing when the rubber will do it for you :)

Have you used the 1.5mm mark V yet? I used to play 1.5mm Tornado and the 1.5mm Mark V and used Tackiness chop in 1.5 on the BH in the old days. I don't even know why I stopped using 1.5, was it with the ball change, was it because 1.5mm was just not common locally anymore? I really can't remember but I somehow ended up on Max sponge. I often wonder what's the lower limit of sponge I could play on now with the 40mm ball, my swing has changed to a lot more forward since those days, like most people I guess so maybe 1.5 doesn't work as well as it used to but let us know. I do remember using a 2mm sponge in the time I was using 1.5's and claiming it as "uncontrollable" pretty funny looking back since it seems so tame now, but that does make you wonder just how stable 1.5mm must be

Thanks everyone for the advice.  I am now the proud owner of a Yasaka Extra with Sriver FX 2.1 on both sides.  I love it.  Thanks Again.