Here is my summary of the most notable / special rubbers and blades from
the Butterfly brand. This is not meant to promote or criticize the
Butterfly brand or products in any way, it’s simply a summary of
opinions on the more famous and highly regarded products of the brand.
Butterfly is one of the most famous and largest table tennis equipment
manufacturers in the world. Established in 1950 in Japan, Butterfly has
developed into one of the market leaders, with high quality products,
although with higher price-tags to match. Butterfly have many factories
producing their products, including several rubber factories Japan,
Germany and China, and blade factories in Japan, Hungary and China.
One of the reasons the Butterfly is so well known is marketing and
information…there are few others who put in the same effort and have the
same budget. All the information is of great benefit to users, and is a
credit to Butterfly. Although a lot of the Butterfly products are very
good, some or no better than those made by some other manufacturer,
often made in the same factory, but it’s the marketing and promotion
that turns people to Butterfly. Most people can find a suitable blade
and rubbers from several of the major manufacturers, but it’s often
personal preference or brand loyalty that drives them to Butterfly. Of
course this is the same for several of the other major brands.
After talking to many people, and getting lots of great feedback from
people on the table tennis forums, I’ve summarised the most popular
Butterfly rubbers and blades below. Although the popularity can be
biassed by marketing and availability, there are some that many agree on
to be great products, so there must be something to it…
Butterfly Rubbers:
Sriver – probably the most famous of all rubbers, that has stood the
test of time and is still commonly used in modern days, even after
several decades since it was released. This rubber is suitable for all
levels, where thinner sponges are usually used for more control at the
lower levels and they rubbers are speed glued at higher level for extra
performance.
Other Sriver variants (Sriver EL,
Sriver FX, G2, G2-FX) Building on the
great reputation of sriver, several other variants have been developed
over the years. The FX and particularly the EL have also enjoyed great
success, the G2 and G2-FX are more recent and have not been quite as
popular, partially due to the wide range of similar rubbers now on the
market.
Bryce series – Bryce and
Bryce FX are without a doubt two
of the most popular choices for offensive players at higher levels,
especially where speed glue is used. Many (but not all) agree that this
rubber needs to be speed glue to really make it come alive, so with the
upcoming ban, it may lose some of it’s popularity. The
Bryce Speed,
Bryce Speed FX are an attempt to modify the rubber to make it
more usable without speed glue, but opinions on this are mixed.
The new Tenergy 05 has been creating a bit of stir lately as the
latest glue-free offensive rubber, but it’s a little too early to tell
how successful it will be. Other offensive rubbers worth noting are the
Tackifire C, Cermet and Catapult which have been
successful for some people, but don’t stand out as much as the ones
above. The Raystorm is one of the more popular short pimple
rubber.
For the more all-round or defensive styles, there are the Tackiness C
and D, which were very popular for many years and still used by some
people today. The Feint Long II and III are their more popular
long pimples, but have not had a huge following. The Super Anti
appears to be one of the more highly regarded anti-spin rubbers out
there, but with only a small percentage of players playing with these
types of rubbers these days, we tend not to hear much about it. With the
frictionless long pimple ban now in place, this rubber may well make a
comeback.
Butterfly Blades:
The Butterfly blades are generally regarded as high quality
blades. Butterfly has factories in several different countries, but
those made in Japan clearly stand out as top quality blades.
The Butterfly Primorac, Primorac carbon,
Petr Korbel,
Gergely, Sardius, Andrejz Grubba and Mazunov
have been around for many years and have been the most successful
Butterfly blades.
In recent years, more research and technology has produced high-tech
blades wich appear to have overtaken some of the earlier carbon blades
in popularity. The Michael Maze and
Timo Boll Spirit are
high quality blades and have become very popular, and are used by some
of the current top players in the world. The Schlager carbon
seems to have a following, but it’s likely to be too fast to control for
most people, although the sheer speed is often an attraction. The
Kong Linghui Special is also highly regarded with a good following.
The Cypress-S seems to be the most popular J-pen blades,
partially due to poor availabilty (in western countries) to the other
J-pen blades.
The Matsushita Pro and the Joo Se Hyuk appear to be the
most popular more defensive blades, and appear to be growing in
popularity.
Final words:
It is likely that a player of any level and style can find
something appropriate from the Butterfly brand, although this is the
case for many of the other major brands too. Hopefully this summary will
be useful for Butterfly fans or those that only have this brand
available to choose from. Butterfly do have a range of other table
tennis related items, in fact they pretty much sell everything related
to table tennis, but blades and rubbers are the extent of this write-up.
For reviews and further information, see our
Butterfly rubbers and
Butterfly blades reviews. |
