Stiga Vs Butterfly blades.

I have always been a BTY user and for some years, a little BTY blades collector.

Ebenholz V is used by some china women national members (cant remember names at the moment)

I agree to nearly all points, but with some acceptions.

Like I already wrote somewhere on MyTT, Stiga was the best blade-producer in the 60's up to the 80's (without a really competitor until 1972). After 20-30 years as number one the quality got worse and also the playing-skills. You can feel the difference, if you compare an old Stiga Allround Wood from 1970 with the actual Allround Classic or the old Offensiv Classic (black double lens) with the actual Offensiv Classic.

In the last two years Stiga released some good blades with very good playing-skills like Rosewood XO, Intensity VPS or especially the Emerald. The Emerald also looks extremely good. Personally I bought three Emerald and still have two of them. All three blades had high quality and no problems after dozens of rubber-removings.

On the other side I bought a Butterfly Liu Shiwen, which had extremely poor quality (the outer veneer splintered, when you look on it). Nevertheless the average craftsmanship of the actual Butterfly blades is much better than most Stiga blades. In this point I agree 100% and maybe the Emerald is a positive acception, because I have seen pictures of some Carbonado blades with really low quality.

The price-discussion is not fair in my eyes, because (here in Germany) I can buy Stiga Equipment with very good dicount. Therefore the real price of the Emerald is not 147€, it is maybe 110€ and for this price Butterfly has NOTHING comparable, which is able to competite with the Stiga Emerald.

I have tested the Zhang Jike Super ZLC, Mizutani Super ZLC and Carbonado. In my eyes these Butterfly top blades are totally overpriced. A Carbonado with big discount may be still expansive, but a Super ZLC without any discount is crazy.

The rubber-quality of Butterfly is very good - without any discussion. The Tenergy-family is still on top, although it was released many years ago - really astonishing. In the last years some other brands also released some very good rubbers like the Evolution-series for example. In this point Stiga is still far away from the top, although the Airoc M is a good backhand-rubber, but they have only 2-3 acceptable rubbers, the rest is .......

Stiga blades are much more popular in China.

I have used quite a few different blades in the last few years. I really like Donic's blades. The price to quality ratio is very good. Xiom and Nexy also have some nice ones. I've yet to find a Nittaku blade or Stiga blade that suited me. Butterfly is really good, but a bit overpriced. 

Magic_M wrote: The price-discussion is not fair in my eyes, because (here in Germany) I can buy Stiga Equipment with very good dicount. Therefore the real price of the Emerald is not 147€, it is maybe 110€ and for this price Butterfly has NOTHING comparable, which is able to competite with the Stiga Emerald.

I own a bunch of BTY blades but im playing with Stiga RW5 but honestly Maze/TBS has better craftmanship than any Emerald/Carbonado/RW/EBHZ for sure.... It´s not a matter of a battle of brands, this thread depends about which model are we comparing to.  I also had in the past a few crappy rough finished BTY Blades that were bullshit, such as old Timo Boll Forte SBC or classic TB ALL series. Same thing happens with TB Tricarbon.

BTW interesting thread...

Edited by jonyer1980 - 04/23/2015 at 11:50am

Highly doubt it's the commercialy available blades. Probably customs.

No point in comparing equipment to wang liqin. Not only is he a superb player. His equipment is crazy. Have people forgotten the video clip where he shows off the stickiness of the rubber?

I'm not so crazy about Butterfly's QC sometimes either. It all depends on what factory makes them. There are a lot of Hungarian made BTY blades that are just crap next to the japanese made counterpart. I can imagine having one Korbel made in Japan that's awesome, and then my backup is hungarian and completely crappy. 

Edited by beeray1 - 04/23/2015 at 11:52am

jfolsen wrote: beeray1 wrote: before the quality went down, Stiga was great. Now, the chinese made ones are better quality than swedish made. This is due to improvements in china, and cutbacks in sweden. The Chinese domestic Stiga blades are very well made.  I find Stiga blades highly variable. I went through five different Stiga OC CR blades at one point, the first played great, one of the nicest blades I have ever used. I bought four more over the next couple of years, no two played alike. I finally switched to Butterfly, not for the way they played, but just for the fact that I could have a backup blade that played the same as my primary. The weight varies a bit, but the feel of the blade is much more consistent. There are probably lots of other manufacturers that do superb quality control like Butterfly, I am just not as familiar with them. jfolsen

TT newbie wrote: It´s all about preferences. I´ve never liked any BTY cpen blade. They can´t be compared to Stiga, Yasaka or Donic cpen blades.

I agree, I prefer the feel/feedback on a Stiga blade. Even softer Butterfly blades feel hard to me. But it was like playing the lottery, I had a one in five chance of winning and getting the blade I actually wanted. And you couldn't tell by weight with Stiga, two blades that had identical weight would sound different when you bounced a ball on the blade, and they would play different.

jfolsen

beeray1 wrote: before the quality went down, Stiga was great. Now, the chinese made ones are better quality than swedish made. This is due to improvements in china, and cutbacks in sweden. The Chinese domestic Stiga blades are very well made.