Stiga 2012 blades review!

I have made a blade once with ebenholz.
Ebenholz is extremely hard but also veneers are much more rigid. This is not always apparent once the veneer becomes part of a blade. It needs the veneer on itself to notice this (or playing tabletennis and recognize it)

It makes that it needs some time and battering to supple such a toplayer to decrease the veneer rigidity in the sweetspotzone.
The spruce softness underneath starts to come through more then and with this build this works out positive in all aspects. Feeling in shortgame even becomes better thanks to the more energy intensive part of playing.
 Using a soft sponge means asking more suppleness then it has because softer sponge is less sponge and all sponge is softer then wood and in this case even more.
Then less sponge for the bat (harder) can win from softer sponge and the whole bat becomes harder from softer sponge. A softer ball this turning point for the same blade would be with a softer sponge (or thicker) and harder ball a harder sponge.
Easy fully convincing test would be a good hit on the head or with knockles. A harder sponge is much softer then because it,s more rubber. The soft spruce then reacts inert instead of involved. Hence the blade has more power hidden in the spruce and core but it can,t be used. After some time this gets better but too soft sponge stays too soft for these outer veneers because it,s too hard for the blade (including other layers). This is not a contradiction because a veneer is not a whole blade.
 







Edited by mercuur - 08/13/2012 at 7:18am

Just jumping in with my unsolicited opinion RE ZLF's speed vs others.....

Fidelio wrote: Just jumping in with my unsolicited opinion RE ZLF's speed vs others..... I recently playtested several blades pretty systematically, using the same forehand rubbers on each of them.  Among my HRT Rosewood V, TB ZLF, TB ZLC, TBS, and Viscaria, my ZLF had (by far) the least amount of "bite" on my loopdrives - meaning, as I switched from blade to blade with different practice partners, they would consistently tell me that the loops I hit with the ZLF were the easiest to return (less spinny and slower).  As I've had the ZLF for around 2 years now, I can also say that my personal impression is that it's the slowest blade I own for mid-distance play - although this might be because I feel more confident swinging harder with an all-wood blade (the response/feel gives me more confidence away from the table).  My ZLF also feels extremely light compared to my other blades. I'll weigh it soon. By the way, the fh rubbers I used for testing were Xiom Vega China VM and DHS Tin Arc....I've used the ZLF with Tenergy 05 in the past, and I seem to recall this setup being very spinny (though, again, it didn't feel that comfortable far away from the table compared to tbs or dhs pg7)

YEO has walnut outer plies, rw has rosewood. the rosewood 5 and xo have stiffer feel fue to their outer plies compared to the viscaria. actually both rosewoods do not lack the power despite the weight difference, its just that i find the rw5 to be faster by a notch

For it's price you can't go wrong with YEO (walnut-spruce-ayous).

Hey guys, so this may seem like an epic thread-bump but I am contemplating buying the OCC.

I've been using the OC CR WRB for a long time now--I think it's a good blade, but a new club member I played made me catch the EJ bug again and said that with the new 40+ ball I should get something faster.

I chatted with him about some blade options for my game and he thought the OCC was a natural choice since I was using the OC CR WRB--it's basically the same blade with some carbon layers added. He also thought I would do well with the Infinity VPS V w/ Diamond Touch, or a BTY Viscaria. In a past life I played with the Yinhe T7 and I did like it a lot, but I switched to OC CR WRB for more touch and control and I was able to loop better with it... but now I find myself looping okay but not able to put some balls away like lobs/fishes. Last I checked the T7 was sort of like a Viscaria clone--but I kind of don't want to buy BTY cause it's so pricey, my buddy said that the Viscaria is probably the best choice out of all those 3 blades though.

I also contemplated about doing BH-man's "Beast Mode" mod on my OC CR WRB, adding weight to the handle with some junk hardware (screws, nuts bolts, and putting it all in place with wood glue), but the same buddy talked me away from doing that saying that even if I do add the weight to the blade, it won't change the fact that the plies are still going to be slower than I want.

So what do you guys think.... OCC? Infinity VPS? Viscaria? Don't buy anything until i'm O2000 with my current setup of OC CR WRB, Bluefire M1 Turbo and Yasaka Mark V HPS Soft? I'm open to your thoughts--thanks guys :)