Equipment experiment
Recently I have put together some bats for some friends using some old cheap blades. By ‘old cheap’ I mean I have used Gold Cup blades, some Stiga Hard bat blades and old Stiga pre-made bat blades.
Using some of my old very cheap bats, I have removed the rubber from a pre-made bat and put on some second hand Mark V. The results have been incredible.
Spin and Control
I have found that you can generate a great deal of spin and still get good control because of the slowness of the blade. In fact we are going to use some of these bats in one of our upcoming lessons. The feel has been great. I think a top 10 world ranked player would beat everyone below the top 200 players in the world using it.
Having experimented with this has brought out for me the importance of the rubber compared to the blade. For an intermediate level player, I think if you can get yourself a reasonable rubber and put it on one of your existing blades you may be able to save money and still have a bat that you will be able to work with to a reasonable level. However, I don’t think you would get the same result if you used a good blade and cheap rubber from a pre-made bat.
How to Prepare the Bat
I have found the easiest way to prepare these bats is to rip the top rubber sheet off the bat. This comes off quite easily. Then I have used an electric sander to remove the sponge. This takes a couple of minutes per side to remove. You can also use a solvent to soften the sponge and remove it that way. Then just put on some reasonable rubber and see how you go.
Conclusions
Rubber is more important than the blade at this level. So, if you are looking for a good pre-made bat, look for one with a better quality rubber above all else. I think the rubber here is the most important thing. Of course if you can afford a better blade it will be preferable as you advance, but I was interested to note the effectiveness of the reasonable rubber on a very cheap blade. Watch out for it in one of our future lessons.
Charles
commented on March 13th, 2009 at 2:15 am
I do agree that slow blades can help generate your own speed and spin. Your shop should mainly sell premade bats with rubbers. The premade rubber isn’t suitable for the developing play. So I think putting in non premade rubbers is a good idea.
Charles
commented on March 13th, 2009 at 2:19 am
I’m an Advanced Player and I’ve been winning tourneys with a Primorac with Srivers unglued. This just goes to show you it’s better to use slow classic rubbers than new ones like Tensors. Classic Unglued Rubbers help you produce your own spin and speed. Tensors on the other while are fragile, expensive and most of all too fast for most players.
Neville
commented on October 18th, 2011 at 9:24 pm
I’ve been doing this for years. At the end of every season I send out a blanket email to Association members asking for any rubbers they have replaced. Some are quite good because they are replaced for every season, some are pretty old. I take them all and use any blades I can find, clean them up and glue the rubbers in place. I then give them to my students at school. It doesn’t take long before they start producing shots with much greater spin and speed than they ever could when using the cheap bats the school purchases. Once they find that they can play shots like the better players at school a lot of them are off to Dandenong to join up.
Alois
commented on October 19th, 2011 at 5:33 am
That is a great idea Neville. Others may want to try it out if they have the contacts of players.