TSP Triple Power Chop Sponge Review

I’ve had my eye on the TSP Triple series for quite a while, mainly because of it’s very high spin rating which really appeals to me. I never got around to trying one, since (1) I didn’t know which one to choose, and (2) I didn’t think they were really tacky since these are Japanese-made, not Chinese-made.

When it was time to replace my existing rubber, I caved in, and decided to test the Triple Power Chop sponge in 1.0mm in my regular blade (Re-Impact ‘Dark Knight’), to see how well I could play with a thin defensive rubber. Below are my thoughts and review.

The package is shown on the right, with the following description and ratings:

Triple Power Chop sponge is good for playing offensive shots and a variety of defensive chops.

Ratings:

Speed: 8
Spin: 10 + α
Sponge: 55 degrees

Visual inspection:

The sponge hardness of 55degrees is hard, quite hard even compared to many Chinese rubbers. The sheet out of the packet felt quite stiff, despite it having only a 1mm sponge. The sheet looks of high quality, which you’d expect from the Japanese-made rubber.

The topsheet comes with an adhesive plastic protection sheet attached, which is not that common for Japanese-made sheets. JUIC makes the only other ones like this that come to mind. Here is a closeup (click to zoom):

The topsheet does not feel all that soft, although it’s a little hard to feel since the sponge is so firm. Here is a side-view of the top-sheet / sponge:

The sponge is cream with a tint of orange in colour. Although it’s firm, it feel like a regular Japanese sponge, not one of those energy absorbing or ‘dead’ sponges. Here is a closeup of the sponge and the markings:

The thickness is actually a range not a specific value. Although other manufacturers may specify a specific thickness, there is always a range that they vary over anyway, so at least TSP spills it out.

Grip of the topsheet on the bat

When I cut and glued the rubber onto my blade, I removed the adhesive protection sheet, which was stuck on very well. It’s not designed to be reused, as it tore off into several pieces upon removal.

To my surprise the topsheet is really tacky, much more than I expected for a Japanese-made rubber. Many manufacturers claim a tacky top-sheet, but in reality they just mean it’s very grippy, not sticky like a Chinese sheet. This sheet was indeed very sticky, as sticky as something like original DHS Hurricane 2!

Bouncing a ball onto the bat from about 1/2m height produced about 3 bounces before it stuck to the sheet 🙂 ! This was obviously more a property of the sticky topsheet rather than the sponge.

Performance in play

I decided to devote my whole practice session to this rubber, rather than having a brief hit with 1 or 2 people to test some of the characteristic and forgetting about some of the other ones.

Although the initial tack wore off after a little while, the rubber remained tacky, and even at the end of the session I could still lift up the ball a little.

It took me a little while to get used to this rubber, as the tacky top-sheet and firm sponge actually made the bat feel slow, but as I started to hit it harder the blade effect kicked in, and it felt much more lively.

Serving: My regular 999 Turbo is mildly tacky with a soft top-sheet, so you’d expect the spin on the serve to be very good, but the spin on this TSP was clearly even better, which my opponents commented on even without telling them I was using a new rubber. I think it’s the dead feel of the rubber on low impact that allows you to make faster contact without going long, enabling you to generate more spin.

Return of serve: It’s a tacky rubber, so it’s going to be sensitive to incoming spin. Making more solid or aggressive contact seemed to make it a lot easier. The dead feel of the rubber made it real easy to control the pace though, and I could add an enormous amount of spin to the ball if I read the spin right.

Looping: Well I don’t know what sort of looping performance you’d expect from the rubber with a 1mm sponge, but personally I didn’t expect too much, even though my blade is supposed to work well with thin sponges.

On fine brush loops the throw was high and the spin was very high! At medium pace I had to make sure I was brushing the ball finely, or the throw would drop and the ball would not clear the net. At high impact the throw was very low, so I don’t believe this rubber is suitable for power-looping in 1mm. With thicker sponges it will obviously be a lot better.

So for an opening slow and high spin loop it’s great, but if counter-looped or blocked hard, it should be followed by a block or hit, as the 1mm sponge will bottom out.

Blocking: An absolute breeze! The balsa-based blade is already good for blocking, but this rubber made it effortless. Against any loop I simply needed to get my bat to it, and it would go back, and I could very the pace with ease. Only for slow spinny loops I either had to close the bat or block through it hard.

Hitting: When hitting the ball hard, the throw is really low and it’s very insensitive to spin. This took me quite a while to get used to, but I suspect that flat hitters would like this very much.

Pushing / Chopping: This is obviously what the rubber is designed for, and it performed really well. I could really load up short pushes with heavy backspin, or take the spin off and return a float.

Similarly chopping loops was really nice…obviously the 1mm sponge was a great help here too, as the control was fantastic, and the spin was really high when I wanted it.

Conclusion

This is a high quality rubber specifically designed for choppers, and it allows you to generate huge amounts of spin. Close-in, a pushing and blocking style game would suit, and a faster blade is recommended for more power for flat hits / smashes. Away from the table you can chop loops with great control, and can return then with very high spin or no spin with easy. A thicker sponge is recommended if you wish to loop at medium to high pace.

You can buy the TSP Triple Power Chop Sponge from OOAK Shop here.

By: haggisv