Choosing a bat and rubber

I'm using a Hunter Flame blade with DHS Hurricane 8 rubbers on both sides. But, I feel that this blade and the rubbers are too slow. But, I get awesome control. 

Hi Eric,

You could try an Offensive rated blade if this one is too slow for you.  Otherwise stay with it and just focus on increasing the speed of your strokes.

I agree with Alois on blade selection.  It is also the Chinese philosophy on blade/rubber choice - use a more control-focused blade and rubber, improve technique until you are playing the fastest you can with that rubber and then move up to a faster rubber.  Keep doing that until you have the fastest rubber possible, then change blades.  I also agree re disregarding manufacturers ratings - they are only good to compare products from the same manufacturer in the same product line (e.g. one Hurricane rubber to another Hurricane rubber). You cannot use these ratings to compare say an Andro rubber or blade to a Tibhar rubber or blade.  They use different criteria and scales.  If you really want to use numbers to assist in your decision, use revspin as a guide, but only for those products with many reviews (so anomalies are smoothed).

That said, what's best for you depends upon your level as well as your style and you didn't mention that.  How long have you been playing and at what level?  Do you compete? Are you at your physical peak, or a senior playing starting to slow down, etc.? 

Assuming you are an intermediate player between 20 and 40 of reasonable physical capability, here's my 2-cents worth:

The Flame is a moderate level blade favouring control over speed, but it isn't slow. Being of balsa core, it is also very light (59 grams) so should help enable rapid acceleration and thereby good spin and speed.  It should suit (with the right rubbers) anything up to an OFF game at close to middle distance. It might struggle a bit if you like to play away from the table though.

The H8 is a balanced all-round rubber - not particularly fast, which means you have a lot of leeway/choice for faster rubbers.  The H3 is much faster but still offers high spin and reasonable control, so you could try changing to H3 if you want to stick with DHS/Hurricane.  I'd suggest the Provincial (orange sponge) or National (blue sponge) variants if you can find them.  Yasaka Rakza 9 or 7, or Tibhar Aurus (Prime) would be good alternatives for fast, offensive looping, if you have the control to make the most of their speed.

Cheers

Thank you for the feedback. It was very helpful!!!

I did change my blade to a DHS Power G7. I felt like it was a bit faster, but not much.

Since the DHS Power G7 blade is heavier, I didn't have to put a lot of effort to hit the ball with a lot of power.