Review by haggisv:
Review: Giant Dragon TaiChi soft & hard (2.2mm black) on a TSP Balsaplus
4.5 blade
1. The reviewer:
Intermediate to high level club level player, modern defender (Chinese
style looper on FH). Blade TSP Balsaplus 4.5.
2. Physical Properties:
Very nice packaging as with all Giant Dragon rubbers. Sheet looks of
decent quality. It has a plastic protection sheet which reveals a medium
soft very mildly tacky matt topsheet. It is not shiny like most other
Chinese sheets, and feels it does not have a much grip right on the
surface. The 'soft' version has a measured hardness of 38deg (with
respect to other rubbers in my Sponge Hardness table) and the 'hard'
measured around 40deg...I could not really feel much difference. The
rubbers came with a glue sheet, which is a nice addition.. wish more
manufacturers would do this.
3. Speed:
The topsheet of this rubber feels fairly slow and with a medium throw
makes brush loops slow and spinny. When you loop a little harder, the
springy sponge kicks in giving it decent power but still not fast.... I
think a faster blade is required to get more speed. I tried it on the
Giant Dragon Kris blade blade, and the speed was a lot better. The speed
feels quite linear of this rubber, although the throw seems to increase
as you hit the ball harder. It felt very nice and controlled for hitting
and blocking.
4. Spin:
When you make soft contact, it did not seem to grip like most Chinese
tacky rubbers do, but when you dig in a little more, it really grip and
you get very good spin. On loops the spin was decent but not high. Only
on chop and pushes the spin generated was very high. The upside of this
is that it seemed quite insensitive to spin, making return of serves
particulaly easy (the dead feel and insensitivity made is remarkable
easy to return serves actually).
5. Control:
Control on this rubber is excellent. As I mentioned, it's not
particualtly fast, it's quite insensitive to spin, making this a high
control rubber. It really excels at blocking/hitting and chopping,
partially due to it's insensitivity to spin.
6. Other Playing properties:
Throw of the rubber is on the low side of medium. It has no glue feel at
all, which is what I expected particularly for the price. it is really a
control style rubber, and it's very good in this aspect. It's certainly
fast enough to attack though, particularly on a faster blade. It seemed
to work best on a faster balsa blade, but I expect it will work well on
reasonble fast blades with some flex as well.
7. Reference:
I can only really compare these rubber to other Giant Dragon rubbers, as
they do feel quite unique. For the short and low impact part of the
game, it feels similar to typical Chinese rubbers although less tacky,
but when you start hitting hard, it feels more euro, probably due to the
springy sponge. |
