NEXY Reviews: the SPEAR blade

I got away from Spear to my Sword Arylate custom with Thors. I had tried Thors on Spear, but that didn't harmonize well due to the top layer softness of the Spear. Thors on the Sword Arylate was a better combination and superior over Spear with Sword Hero Enhanced until all of a sudden and without warning Thors went ballistic and uncontrollable on me. The Virtuoso Hexer+ combo was great at slow to mid speed but at the higher speed, the combination of Tensor kick and Virtuoso kick was too much for me to handle. After I told them about it, OSP recommended a medium hard rubber for the Virtuoso. I got a hold of a slightly used sheet of Xiom Omega IV Pro and when Thors went crazy on me, I thought I give the Virtuoso a try with the new rubber. This is the best harmonizing combination for me yet. Lots of control and feel in the low and mid speeds. Good agility (the blade can be moved quickly without great effort) and lots of control in high speed, high spin situations. My Spear is right now without rubber, but I plan to put the Giant Dragon TopEnergy testing rubber on it once I get it. I have a bunch of IQUL used rubbers for the bh as a neutral choice while I test the fh rubber.

1.9mm is the minimum on the fh imo.

 

Adding T05 to the SPEAR is like hitting with a "Souped Up Ford"

I could definitely make it my main blade because all I can do in the all round, loooping and hitting games I could do with the SPEAR with minor adjustments.

 

I am interested in testing the  "SPEAR" blade !

Just as a side note, the Hero rubber smells pretty fishy right out of the package and has a sticky paper on the sponge (to keep the tuning in?).

I'm not sure how much break in time (if any) this rubber needs, but it was decent right away. The rubber is grippy but completely non-tacky.

This took some getting used to as the throw of the rubber was quite low on brush loops, but as soon as the sponge gets engaged it really takes off in speed and spin. The arc was beautiful low and dropped sharply at the end. I felt the ball nicely and had fewer misses the longer the session went. On loop drives, this rubber clicks with a really high pitch, whereas on flat hits it sounds pretty woody. This rubber is not as soft as PME 42.5, but not really hard either.

The Optimum MP on the BH seems a bit too bouncy now and I had more problems keeping the BH loops on the table. For me, Spear works best with a medium-low throw rubber and it has a really nice kick on hard hits and loop drives. I think I will put a harder rubber on the BH to take off some of the bounciness.