Butterfly Senkoh Max review

hi all
first review on the forums.

Having tried all-wood and carbon blades, both relatively inexpensive with rubbers (around 30-40 USD altogether?), I decided to upgrade myself to a nice blade from a reputable manufacturer, one that had a name for world-class products. I also wanted to try Hinoki, or cypress, especially 1-ply hinoki, because I had heard wonders about this seemingly mysterious type of blade. I decided upon the senkoh-max.

The style I play is a heavy looping and occasional fishing style on the forehand, and on the backhand, a driving and flat hitting style. However on the backhand I've incorporated loops and topspin attacks. My last racket, the Komann carbon, was a racket made for smashing and hitting, but the racket I was going for, the Senkoh max, was supposedly better for topspin, which made it very appealing. At the store, it was a whopping 104g alone, so I put two lighter rubbers, the Donic F3 FH and Donic Coppa JO Silver BH on.

I hit with it recently the last few days for about four hours. My first impressions are that it does not quite have the touch on the backhand to consistently be driving; however, the consistency was surprisingly good, and I found that even split-second blocks would be spot on the table. The blade has nice control; don't be fooled by Butterfly's 7.0 rating. On the forehand, it has excellent feel when looping, which allowed me to pull off some serious killer loops against my partner, a chopper. The blade also has sufficient power to be smashing and driving as well. On the backhand, the combination of a 2.2mm MAX thickness of coppa and the blade allowed me to loop more effortlessly. However, for maximum effectiveness of the blade, players will have to put at least some topspin; otherwise the feeling will be hollow. Also, when playing you can feel the 'edge' of the blade, especially on BH, because it's quite thick. As a result, the sweet spot sort of falls off towards the edges. However, play in the middle of the racket is excellent, with very good control.

The serving and short game is good. I don't know too much about the characteristics of this blade and that blade, but I was able to run my partner around with some loops and short dropshots. My serves, esp. the reverse pendulum, were exceptionally spinny, but probably due to the rubber.

Overall I would rate this blade's speed an 8/10 and control an 8/10. When you drive, there is good hard feel as well as when you block, but when you loop, there's a nice dwell time on the racket that lets you put more spin and pace on the ball. This is no doubt a looper's racket, but one which can play the all-round game as well. Just to show this, I played against a very good penholder who coaches, and was able to win 7 points off him just by playing a blocking game, but was also able to loop easily against the chopper.