Monday, May 14, 2007

Kokutaku 868 Blutenkirsche German 40-43deg sponge 2.2mm

I finally had a good session with one of these rubbers. These are probably the highest quality Chinese made rubbers I've seen to date, with good performance to match! I was quite impressed... This is probably why the Japanese Kokutaku let them make their rubbers for them...

Although the sheets are a little tacky, they still have good speed and are very spinny. They are not all that fast in the short game (which is good), but have a the benefits of tacky rubbers for that part of the game.

When you dig the ball into the rubber a little further, the German sponge really starts to shine, giving good spin and speed. This is where you get a bit of a kick, where presumably the explosion III technology starts (whatever that means?). In general it a very nice rubber for most parts of the game, particularly for looping.

When I glued up this rubber, I got a huge dome even from a single layer of my Tibhar long lasting glue. The effects were very obvious, a further significant boost in performance! Particularly for hitting and powerlooping this rubber was fast, and loud (glue sound)!

I would expect the Kokutaku 007 (with German sponge) to have similar performance, but probably a little faster. Although both use German sponges, the sponges on these rubbers are different types, so they may excel in different areas...

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