Hi guys, I have what I think is a trick question, I'm curious how you are going to answer it 

You try a very hard rubber (say Hurricane 3 41 deg 2.2mm) on a rather stiff blade and you feel the ball doesn't sink completely in the sponge even at max power. You get poor spin , poor speed, no dwell time. When you loop in a bad position and can only use 70% of your power, the loop doesn't even make it to the net.

You realize you don't have enough power to completely compress such a hard rubber. You are under-exploiting the rubber, you are not using it to its full potential.

Then you switch to a more flexible blade (with the same rubber) and you see the dwell time has increased, and these problems are reduced. You get more spin and speed. Your overall game improves.

Now I have a question: is this because you are exploiting the rubber's potential better than before?

That is: is it because the ball is sinking in the sponge more than before? Or is it sinking in the sponge just like before? Or maybe even less than before?

I'm curious to see if your answer will be like mine.

my advice.

change rubbers to 729 focus iii snipe.

change blade to palio energy 03.

play with this setup at least one year.

then come back here and tell me if I was right or not.

as long as you continue with hurricane iii and spin and all that nonsense your game will not improve.

stiltt wrote: With a flexier blade, the ball stays in contact with the rubber a bit longer so there is more time for the rubber to shine.

yes, but does this mean the ball is sinking in the rubber more than before?

If I use a stiff, hard blade the blade will flex away less hence the ball will sink more into the sponge. On a flexible blade the blade will bend absorbing some energy which otherwise would be absorbed by the sponge.

It's a different question which is better for actual play...

Exactly! I agree with you. I wanted to see if someone else thought like me

If you don't have enough power to compress that sponge more than 50%, why would a flexible blade help you compress it 60%?

We can even test this: take a pickaxe and make a hole in the ground. Now take a pickaxe with a flexible handle and with the same power. Why would it sink more than before in the ground? It will sink less than before.

So, even with the more flexible blade, you are still under-exploiting the rubber. You're still getting less than optimal spin and speed. You'd still be better off switching to a slightly softer rubber (until you can almost bottom out).

I agree that you need flex to have adequate contact and spin on your shots

Even the HARD FEEL of a YEO (5.7) and TB ZLC (5.5 thickness) works for hard tacky because of the BEND these thin blades provide —> I don’t ever look at blades past 6.0 with the type of rubbers I use. 

Softer blades from experience BEND more than a stiff blade so the REBOUND off the rubbers isn’t as HARSH (less dwell)

Hence why I find the new INNER CARBONS at 6.0 thickness NONLINEAR as they change in TRAJECTORY once you PASS the carbon layer 

not saying your theory is wrong, I had your thinking that hard rubber will work better on a hard and stiff blade but in practice a H3 on a carbonado 290 does not work as well as on a 145.

tom wrote: but in practice a H3 on a carbonado 290 does not work as well as on a 145.

To be clear, I don't deny that. I'm only saying that, *IF* the rubber was underexploited with the 290 , then it is also underexploited with the 145. (That is, on the 145 you'd still be better off with an H3 which is one degree softer.)

Chinese pro players use a HL5 or Viscaria type of blade like 80% (shakehand). There are some Carbonados and Rosewoods or maybe even Clippers but not many use them anymore.

I use a Viscaria clone myself and it has a hard feeling, I wouldn't call it flexible or stiff it feels somewhere medium, but the ALC tensions it very well giving it some extra kick. I've tried much softer and flexier TB Spirits and much stiffer and harder actual Viscarias. The TB Spirits lack power even with tensor rubbers, the stiff and hard Viscarias have no feeling at all.

This is just my case, there are so many factors for a blade, weight, handle shape, balance, flex/stiffness, and I'm just talking about the same model of Viscaria or whatever else.

TLDR: Stiff and hard (and light, due to armswing speed) blade should be able to penetrate the sponge better. So in this regards some 10mm balsa blade would be the perfect thing for the job, however I doubt it would be a great experience.

Ball ona flexy blade stay more time wrapped by the sponge but harder sponge deform the ball more than a softer one increasing energy transfer

What clone? V14 PRO?

Let's keep it simple. The thing about flex plus hard sponge in the past was that it helped with spin, feeling and control. However, with the advent of plastic, and in particular, Abs balls, blades have become stiffer, and rubbers harder. This is because forward movement and sponge compression is more important than before, to get spin and control. If your technique is not adequate however, you can get away with flexy blade and only topsheet brush on hard rubber, which will give you the control that you experienced, giving the illusion of better sponge engagement, which is not the case.

In short, try medium stiff blade with heavily boosted H40 h3n and be happy.

In the 1st scenario, a slower and flexier blade definitely gives you some extra confidence to hit the ball a bit harder and hence making more use of the sponge. 

In the 2nd scenario, most flexy blades should give a bit more dwell and hence help you create more spin with a brushy stroke compared to a stiffer+faster blade. Slow and stiff blades don't do too bad on brushy strokes, though creating any power on such blades would be a task especially with a super hard rubber. 

In fact I tried that yesterday. Unfortunately it doesn't work for me:

There's a huge difference between H3N 40 and H3N 39. They're totally different worlds.

- heavily boosted H3N 40 (two layers of seamoon): still too slow and too hard. The ball shoots too much upwards and not enough forward. When I don't have time to charge the full stroke and I need to use european fh, it's very slow.

- H3N 39, 1 layer: I shoot rockets without effort, even with european stroke. The rubber is so bouncy that it's faster than an mxp. It would work even unboosted, I'm sure. This time I can feel the blade is engaged, while with 40 the blade basically wasn't being used. Probably I'm bottoming out, but who cares: the throw is high and there's a lot of spin.

I assume you're just feeling the dwell from the blade and thinking the ball is sinking more

Yes, it's an illusion. You'd get the same result with a 1.0mm sponge. (if the theory is correct)

zeio wrote: The ball does not necessarily sink more in the identical rubber on a stiffer blade. It is possible that the ball will deform more instead. The OP's pickax example actually suggests that scenario.

I can't prove it but I don't think the ball deformation is an important variable here. The ball will deform even more with a blade with no rubber. But it will only shoot forward, it will not affect the spin. This is not a proof but I think ball deformation is negligible.

Shifu wrote: orange or blue sponge? Commercial or provincial? This also makes a huge difference

I'm talking orange sponge commercial NEO. The only difference is 39 vs 40. And , to be fair, the 39 was 2 weeks old, while the 40 was only used for 1 day. (but it had two layers instead of one, and had big dome, while the 39 was flat after boosting, because it had reverse dome before)

I had commercials which played very good and I had ones that played like crap.

Hozuki wrote: Exactly, the differences between your two sheets are most likely due to quality issues. Some commercial neo rubbers play great with just 1-2 layers of booster, some take 4 and still aren't elastic enough.

interesting. However (I don't know if it matters) the hardness is accurate: I have two 38, one 39, one 40 and one 41 and it's clear that the hardness printed on the rubbers is accurate. Also, the boosted 39 is still harder than the unboosted 38. The doubly boosted 40 is way harder than the boosted 39. The boosted 41 is harder than the 40.

My doubt is that maybe I need to play more with the 40 to break it in. I remember the 39 (which now shoots rockets) didn't seem so fast in the first week.

Edit: baby oil on the 40 rubber seems to have softened it, and made it faster and bouncier . But I need to test this better. It seems Seamoon doesn't make the rubber softer, Johnson's baby oil does.

Ball deformation increases the contact surface, so it certainly increases the spin other things equal. But other things are not equal if you increase the rubber hardness beyond a certain point. Because then you are also giving up the fact that the rubber wraps the ball. So, if the rubber-wrapping factor is more important than ball deformation, you will lose spin. So, yes, it needs to be tested which factor is more important.

But to me it seems likely that the rubber wrapping the ball outweighs the effect of ball deformation. Imagine a blade with an H3 rubber but with a 0.5mm sponge. And then the same blade with the same H3 rubber but with 2.2mm sponge. It seems safe to say that the ball will deform more with the 0.5mm than with the 2.2mm (because the blade is harder than the sponge). It also seems safe to say that the spin will be less on the 0.5mm sponge. Even though the ball deforms more in that case. So the ball wrapping effect is probably much more important. Maybe. :)

I also agree with the blade stiffness/flex and hard/soft are different attributes of a blade. Lastly we talk about sponge hardness, but it really is sponge and topsheet hardness that matter. We never compress one without the other. 

Fun discussion. 

so with the above stmts, a lot of  the dynamics of the rubber is still unknown to us, and although it is fun to have all kinds of discussions, we should still trust what equipment works best  for us (in reality)