Review:"NEW better" 729 F1 - Powerlooper's Dream

Seguso, the reason you feel you need that power from a blade is likely due to the high total rubberweight you put on a blade. Hurricane III/sun max fh and globe 999 max bh that,s a real load. Besides being very heavy to handle the blade flexes more when accellerating quickly for a smash and recovers from that flex slower also.  In technical terms the "flexing frequency" of a blade/setup is lowered then.
It,s not just (head)heavy for you but also for the blade. Lowered frecquency means less fast and most felt on shorter quick strokes with sudden high accelleration. These strokes don,t work then on more flexible "slower" blades with sufficient time and time is not always sufficient for a long stroke.
if you would put a light rubber on bh the total weight for rubbers gets lower and then a more flexible blade still has a high enough frecquency (quick enough) for flathits and quick counters.

Two medium weight rubbers both sides could do the same trick offcourse.
Rule of thumb I always use is that total rubber weight does not exceed the weight of a blade or not too much.
The rubber combinations you use would then need a hundred gramms blade to have both the rubbers and the blade perform to their potential. For me as my limit is around 180 gramms for a setup this limits total rubber weight to approx 90 gramms combined with a ninety gramms blade. When I use a 85 gramms blade I have to lower the rubber weight more. This almost always seems to work for combining rubbers and blades to a balanced - versatile- setup.




Edited by mercuur - 04/03/2011 at 6:22am

Maybe soft is how you experience it.
For a smash you need to accellerate very quick (ntensively) and then also have a quick response from the blade. Otherwise you can,t bottom out these hard sponges to get to the hardness of the wood. Doing this the weight of the rubber at the other side works as a more dead weight because it lowers the frecquency where it has no further funtion. A heavier blade same type has a higher frecquency (is faster).  Weight for one thing works completely different (for power speed aso) then for another.
Bladehardness influences this but also the frecquency which is influenced significantly by total rubberweigth and more when a blade is less powerfull more flexible or lighter.

A simple test for this is to do some flathitting for ten minutes at the end of a trainingsession and for last five minutes take the bh rubber from the blade. With only at one side a rubber you experience where this type of rubbers origins from, which is one-sided penholdplay. Needs some adjusting to the changed balance but then smashing and flathitting is a breeze even with softer blades then t-8.
The heavier and harder sponged the bh rubber is the more significant the difference on fh between these two situations will be.

I can be mistaken for the term but I think what you mean is often referred to as stalling.
Dwell time increases too much on hard impact and the ball stays on the rubber too long. It,s still on the rubber when you,re arm allready pulls upward and sideward. That,s where the spin comes from.
In case of this blade for how it,s build the term soft put me on the wrong foot. Soft I think of a soft surface of a blade (for instance thick balsablades with thin outerplies or soft one ply hinoki blades) distinct from the softness that is felt when a blade flexes.

These two things are not always obvious to distinct but in case of the t-8 and wavestone difference I think it is more a diference in flexibillity (between grip and head) that makes you feel t-8 is soft (in comparison) but it really is the flex ; the thinner build makes it flex "deeper" on high impact where the wavestone stiffens more suddenly on higher impact.


Edited by mercuur - 04/03/2011 at 2:29pm

T series is known to have hard feel because of the thin outerlayers. Within that series it,s one of the softer versions I guess. But it,s relative to what one is used to but also for rubber combined with.
The high end chinese rubbers have both a dense sponge and fairly thick topsheets. To have a clearer feel on the blade it needs some hardness to make the rubber feel softer. When the bladesurface caves in more (with some balsa blades as most extreme example) the impact on the sponge spreads over a higher spongesurface towards the blade (heavy chinese rubber soft /supple rubber it,s much less ) which actually makes the rubber feel harder as more sponge to be compressed. For a hard smash this can be crucial because it makes it difficult to fully and quickly compress the sponge and with that overcome the type of katapult that can add spin of give spinsensitivity.
Same principle (" hitting through the spin") causes that hitting a bit harder/quicker for a smash can be more controlled - against spin - then with hesitation.

I thought t-8 was thinner then 7 mm but in general thicker blades have a thicker core and with the corewood as softest wood this makes these blades softer compared with thinner blades. Same idea as with balsa blades but to a lesser extend.

I once had a tsp 6,5 balsa that was good for smashing with japanese rubber and the softer the rubber the harder it felt for a smash. But with heavy chinese rubber (max) it all felt mushy and disconnected ; too light and too soft for these rubbers.
On a stiga allround with such a rubber and light rubber on bh I can smash better simply by supporting the blade in the neckarea using grip and some pressure with pointerfinger the blade can be stiffened somewhat to realize a shorter dwelltime.
Dwell coming from softness can,t be influenced in any way. But doing this for flex with a certain blade or type of blade needs technicque and technique has to be learned and also tuned to the properties of a certain blade/setup which takes some more time with it.

All in all with same weight a thinner blade with the two carbon plies closer to each other making it denser can be better for smashing/countering with these rubbers. Good weight for the blade helps enourmously. With a thickness close to 6 mm for a 90 gramms blade there mostly is a good balance between flex/stiffness and softness/hardness and a good enough solid feel for a smash.
But using such heavy rubbers both sides almost becomes impossible then and also disturbs the balance again towards where the dwell comes more (to much) from flex and that then results in the feel that these rubbers need such thicker stiff blades for smashing.



Edited by mercuur - 04/04/2011 at 3:49am

Hi..!! My friend just bought this blade and asked me to photograph it before he seals the blade.
So here are two photos which I took with my Nikon DSLR.

bewulf.. nice pics...!! :)

it may not very clear from the pic is that there are TWO wood plys above the carbon, instead of 1.



It's playing really really well for me. i ordered another one for me, and one more for my clubmate.

i'm very happy with this blade ... and actually i figured some rubbers which didn't work earlier are now working on this blade. this allows you to use even rubbers with diminished topsheet grip, which would have been absolutely unusable with the 7mm blades i played with  earlier.


Edited by debraj - 04/26/2011 at 12:23pm

i doubt if all of them are good... there are some rational and some irrational blades.

while someone noob can even like a irrational blade and post a great review of it (like i did for T8, 5 years back) .... those may not be mainstream blades which people will stick to eventually. earlier i used to like the new materials like aramid or zylon etc... but eventually figured a good blade design is way more important that exotic materials.

debraj wrote: bewulf.. nice pics...!! :) it may not very clear from the pic is that there are TWO wood plys above the carbon, instead of 1.

@debraj, I saw the two wood plys above the carbon. Also, I had to shoot in hurry so I could not get my Nikon 105mm macro to get really sharp close up of the cross section. Will try to do so next time when I get that blade in my hands..!!!

vvu.tee wrote: Well, I have played 7 x 2 h. with it with three different sets of rubbers now (btw, the best combo for me was with Tuttle III of FH and Express 2 on BH) It is a very poor quality blade and I'd say the price of $19 is too much for it (should be selling for $5). The quality is bad to start with but the playing properties actually deteriorate with use and it was kind of fun to play with it to see how much worse it can get. It does not even get close to the performance of Butterfly blades of similar composition. Hotspot is not uniform. Playing properties and weight change overtime. Materials used are of very poor quality. Finishing is even worse. Splinters like hell. Balance is very poor even with relatively light rubbers. Requires sanding and heavy sealing... I can go on forever... The only good think is that it makes a nice sound for a carbon blade :-) You can get a far better blade for that price!! Sorry to spoil the fun, but IMHO it is one of the most over-hyped blades of recent years.

vvu.tee wrote: Well, I have played 7 x 2 h.

7 times. The blade requires finishing, that's right. For 1 extra dollar you can sand it and seal it so that it doesn't get wet and stop splintering.

debraj wrote: i doubt if all of them are good... there are some rational and some irrational blades. while someone noob can even like a irrational blade and post a great review of it (like i did for T8, 5 years back) .... those may not be mainstream blades which people will stick to eventually. earlier i used to like the new materials like aramid or zylon etc... but eventually figured a good blade design is way more important that exotic materials.

@debraj,
              My friend who bought this F-1 blade, wants to know which rubber is more effective on forehand of F-1 ?? H3 NEO Provincial or Thor's..? Since you have tried both, I will appreciate if you could give me you opinion about this. He is a very good forehand looper and on backhand he mostly pushes with occasional loops. He likes to powerloop a lot with his forehand and hence this question.

The craftsmanship of my F1 is definitely very low. That is the lowest I've ever seen. So is the price, it's worth to mention. This doesn't necessarily mean the poor gameplay though. Just didn't test yet.  The only disappointment by now is a 5.5 mm thickness. I expected the figures more close to 5.7 mm. Do anybody have measured the thickness?
As to the properties that deteriorate over seven days, could it be moisture? All my blades from China lose 2-4 g in weight during first week.

Use any sandpaper over 200 and then seal it with 2-3 layers of hairspray. Sand carefully the edges too and seal them double.

I can handle up to 182 grams without problems. My F-1 weighs 83 grams.