BH Rubber experimentation and choice

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   For those who have problems finding their ideal BH rubber. This is my account of how I went through 4 rubbers of different qualities until settling upon the Dawei SuperPower 2008 XP... a $6-8 rubber which may well be the ideal BH for many players!

After a 14 yr break from table tennis, upon coming back I quickly settled for my ideal FH rubber: Adidas P7. Spinny, controlled, powerful, nice throw / arc.

On the BH however, my requirements are different, and the Adidas P7 despite being great for BH too does not fit into what I needed. I needed a rubber that does the opening loop very well, but then can loop, drive, block, and chop / push, place balls and play short with balance and reliability as on BH i play a more varied game, whereas on FH I am an outright looper / attacker.

The 1st rubber I tried was Rakza 7 Soft. I stuck to it for around 9 months with an intermission of 1.5 months where I tried the old Sriver EL out as a comparison. Rakza was similar to the adidas, nice on attacking strokes - loops, flicks, opening loops, good on blocks vs power drives too - but it was very spin sensitive, slightly too bouncy for placement, good for spinny pushes but very difficult to block spinny opening loops. Rubbers which such characteristics (irrelevant of hardness) I find basically only good on offence and therefore more suited to my FH - Adidas P7 is better than Rakza in certain aspects but still falls within this spinny looping category. I find such rubbers limiting as to the variety I need on my BH.

Then I tried the Calibra LT Spin briefly. The Calibra had a lot of the characteristics i needed - opening loop was good, normal looping was ok once I adjusted to the long trajectory - but I always had to be careful as a small mistake leads to a long ball - the ball does not curve down dramatically with the imparted spin. Driving, blocking, punch blocking were excellent - and in rallies on my BH I drive or punch block just as often as I loop so it looked very promising. However, after a few weeks I noticed a strange property of the Calibra - in order to get a quality ball... the ball HAS to sink into the sponge, and therefore light brush loops or brush opening loops intended to land short are not good at all... in fact the ball simply falls dead if you do not engage the sponge! 

This once again made me feel I had lack of variety... this time I could do more different shots, but I could not vary my attacking stroke. On top of that, serve return was great in that it was not spin sensitive, but the pushes and chops had less spin, and were easier to attack.

----------- It was then that I remembered trying a Dawei Super Power XP 2008 rubber on a friend's blade. I remembered liking it so much, I had ordered 2 sheets of this rubber. So I removed my relatively new Calibra LT Spin - and attacked the Dawei... 

With this rubber, I now have a lot of what I need... 
opening loops - very good, effective, easy with good control - can go for both loop drives or brush loops.
normal loop or loop vs loop - again excellent control and good enough speed and spin.
serve return is nice in that it is not spin sensitive.
Drives in rallies are not as fast as the Calibra but faster than Rakza Soft and very well controlled. All type of blocks are great, very reliable - even aggressive punch blocks.

The rubber shines in control, and therefore I am able to play that little bit more aggressively on each ball, no matter what stroke - whereas with previous rubbers there always seemed certain strokes (for example drive with Calibra) where I could play very aggressive and others which I had to hold back a bit.

The only area where I think the rubber could be better is in giving heavy push / chop return vs the opponent's serves - here Rakza 7 Soft is clearly more dangerous. 

I hope this may save some $$$ for players looking for a good BH rubber with great control and excellent variety of shots where it performs very well!