andro rasant power grip vs butterfly tenergy 05

andro rasant power grip is mentioned as one of the alternatives to butterfly tenergy 05.
how equivalent are they?

spin:
they are equivalent in spin.
impossible to tell which one actually has more spin.
they both have a lot, that's all I can say.

speed:
I notice a difference in speed when doing flat hits.
andro rpw is slower and there's less bounciness in this specific shot.
the farther you go from the table the more noticeable this becomes.
it's a bit like that feeling you get from chinese rubbers like hurricane 3.
you loop and there's not that much difference with an euro rubber.
you hit a flat forward shot and it suddenly became sooooo slow.
the andro rpw is not so extreme, it's more bouncy than hurricane 3, but it still keeps a bit of this characteristic.
when looping or pushing or serving there is very little speed difference between tenergy and andro rpw.

control:
this is closely related to the speed characteristic mentioned before.
the andro rubber has this characteristic that depending on how you hit it you will get a different speed.
so it makes it a bit more unpredictable than a tenergy rubber.

I won't say that tenergy has more control in pushes or in loops or in blocks because it doesn't.
what it does have is that predictability, you almost know exactly how much speed you are going to get in each shot.

with andro rubber it's not so predictable, at least in the beginning.
I guess if you spend a lot of time with it you eventually get used to it's characteristics.
but with tenergy you don't really need to do this, somehow the speed always matches what you expect.

durability:
tenergy even though it begins to look old pretty soon lasts as long as you want it to.
you can use it for years if you want to.
andro I haven't used it for that long but it looks pretty durable and the topsheet also is very durable.

weight:
here andro loses badly.
if you put both sides tenergy in one paddle and both sides andro in another paddle (same dimensions both paddles) you get a difference of around 10 grams.
so each cut andro rubber is at least 5 grams heavier than a tenergy.
that's quite a lot and enough to make a paddle head heavy.

well that's all I got, andro rpw is totally usable and you can get used to it with time.
personally I think I have been using tenergy for too long and it's hard to change at this point.

stiga new blades low quality

sometimes I hear people ranting about how the new stiga blades have low quality and how the old ones were much better.
so I needed to write about this nonsense.

first of all, people are complaining about the slightest defects in their blades.
like this guy

http://mytabletennis.net/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=71783&PN=2#907509

"oh my blade has top layer made of two pieces."
tons of blades have this.
donic, stiga, butterfly.
and you don't go complain just because of this.

"oh my blade has knots on it".
tons of blades have knots.
I had andro blades with knots, stiga, butterfly.

all this is pretty nonsense and the guys at stiga must be having a really hard time trying to be correct and polite to these people who expect a certain level of quality on their blades.

I'm not saying that you can't expect the level of quality they are expecting.
I really don't know.
Maybe you should expect that level of quality, maybe not.
There's no way to tell really because it's not like they promise they are going to deliver their blades with this or that characteristic.

One thing I notice a lot with butterfly composites is the center ply, the kiri ply, made of more than one piece of wood.
Other brands it's the same but well everybody has butterfly as the example to follow.

another myth that goes around is that the new stiga sucks while the old stiga had such a great quality.
specially the stiga made in tranas "handmade".
I had probably more than 10 blades of the ones made in tranas like 20 years ago.
you'll get a couple that look fine with no defects.
but I've also seen very bad ones.

Knots? I owned old stiga tranas with knots, really big ones and in the middle of the top ply.

top ply made of two pieces of wood?
I owned old stiga tranas with top ply made of 3!!!! pieces of wood.

so I think if anything stiga quality has been getting better.
and also these "details" are not just in stiga, they are in every brand.

stiga titanium wood

it's a bit old paddle but sounded interesting.
looks like a donic waldner ultra carbon but with titanium instead of carbon.
shouldn't be that fast.

fake dhs w968 w997 theory

one theory says that the only real w968 and w997 blades are the ones with computer printings.
the pics of ma long's blade have this computer letters so this is their main backup for their theory.

the other ones it's not known where they come from or if they even are national blades.

this one below would be real national blade too

this is ma long's blade

again ma long's blade, you can see it has the computer letters.

butterfly hinoki carbon blades specifications

gergely alpha:
154x148
7.1mm

gergely 21:
154x148
6.9mm

sardius:
158x152
7.0mm

amultart:
157x150
7.1mm

gergely:
160x152
6.9mm

primorac carbon:
157x150
6.9mm

schlager carbon:
157x150
7.4mm