OOAK Table Tennis Forum

This is off the February 2008 Table Tennis World Magazine:


A lot of the time, the EJ'ing life is like fishing, when the line is taut, you know you'll have fish to eat, but you don't know what the fish would look like. After you throw away the packaging, and you use your greedy eyes to glaze upon your new blade, the feeling at that instant is unexplainable to non-EJs, the honey-like sweetness it gives you, and you make a wish. Now for most people, 5-plys are too soft and 7-plys are too hard, so us EJs are stck as to what to choose. Luckily, there is a hard 5-ply, the Butterfly Korbel, and a soft 7-ply, Joola Rossi viva.

The feeling of Viva is rather unique. In our minds, 7-plys are hard as bricks, and thick as soaps. A typical representation of this is the Donic Ultra Power, which is even harder and thicker than the traditional P700, and deformation of the blade is nearly non-existent. And due to the bounciness and stiffness, we're forced to use soft rubbers to compensate. The Viva has a soft feel, but the blade has good strength even at mid-distance. However it does not have that unclear feeling typically associated with soft blades. It is easy to hit through. This kind of feeling reminds us of the Yasaka Extra due to the high dwell.

When the Viva is compared to its brother, the Clipper, it is obvious that the Viva has a much clearer feel. Viva has vibrations, but unlike the Clipper where the whole blade deforms to give off massive power when it is hit hard, the Viva deforms to a certain extent, then stops. So the feeling of the blade, a whole whole doesn't change when you hit your hardest shots. But as a sacrifice, the Viva has a higher arc, and seemingly lower speed. But because of this "fault", the Viva thus has a nicer arc, and higher spin. The effect of this unique feeling is that even though it has a soft feel when looping, when you punch block or hit, the blade has a solid feeling due to the aforementioned blade deformation under harder hits.

So the Viva has the precise feel of a 5-ply, yet the power of a 7-ply, although this seems to be the best of both worlds, pairing rubbers with it becomes difficult. With Chinese rubbers, the blade feels dead, with Japanese rubbers, the spin is not enough. At this point it seems that tensors are the way to go. When you've hit through the soft sponge of the tensor, the power then comes from the top ply and the 2nd ply. A clear sound then results, and the speed is completely released.

In comparison, the Korbel doesn't have the precise and clear feeling that the Viva gives. But rather it is a solid feeling. It is like a binary code, with only "0"s and "1"s. It gives decent spin, and rather outstanding speed. But the most valuable aspect would be how solid it feels even on the hardest hits. The Korbel is not thick, however it doesn't vibrate much. Korbel has high dwell, this may be because of the limba top ply, stopping blade deformation. It also has a lower throw, while maintaining the main quality of 5-plys, being easy to hit through.

Because the Korbel's solid feeling is generated by not allowing the blade to deform, thus away from the table, you can see its power decrease dramatically. The Korbel's lack of clear feeling (compared to the Viva) makes drop shots and pushes harder to perform. Pairing it with Chinese rubbers would increase its spin, but would decrease its specialty, ie its speed. Tensors allow almost every shot to be hit through, but the power is limited and the top gear is not fast enough. But with Japanese rubbers, a perfect combination is created. Close to the table, it allows the Korbel's speed to show through, yet at farther distances, the Jap rubber would help compensate Korbel's lack of power.
Do not rely on the Korbel for pressure on the opponent when continuously looping, rather you should try for a kill shot with punch blocks or a hit...in this regard, it is similar to the Viva.

The Viva and the Korbel are classical soft 7-ply, hard 5-ply blades. There are still many out there, such as the Persson Powerplay, which is softer than Viva, has more vibrations, even clearer feeling, but again sacrifices its speed. The Clipper (non CR), being thicker and harder, has a lower throw, outstanding power, but unclear feeling.

In the end, it's pretty much "different strokes for different folks" , but in reality, EJing has many negative aspects, such as carbon being too stiff, 5-plys being too soft, aralyte carbon feeling too weird....all these require us to pair them with rubbers that bring out its strengths and cover its weaknesses. This all takes time and effort and MONEY. But there are many different types of fish in this lake, what will you do when one jumps onto your boat?

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(='.'=) But there's no sense crying over every mistake,
(")_(") You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.

Thank you for translating! Wonderful!

More please! I feel like there is much to learn from Chinese websites and magazines.

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Butterfly Viscaria Black tag
2.2 mm Nexy Karis M on FH and BH

Indeed! Thanks Geko~

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Viscaria. H2 Neo 2.15. Tenergy 05 1.9.

Wow! Great job (again) Geko! Good reviews there & translation...

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instagram: rokphishtt

geko, great review or should I say translation

Cheers.

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Main Setup: There is NO such thing
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Great information geko, you are very worthy of your new name!

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I think it is only fair we make this clear to Geko. Should you be caught as a spy by the chinese, we at OOAK, do not know you and certainly don't want to know you Meanwhile, as long as you are not caught, you are a hero and please keep up the good work

Cheers.

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Main Setup: There is NO such thing
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