Tibhar Balsa Allround 50

A balsa core blade with unique playing characteristics. The workmanship is high-quality, and the flared handle is thick and rectangular, providing a comfortable grip.

Physically, the blade has an impressive thickness of over 8mm, of which the balsa core is only 5mm thick. The woods used for the upper plies are fineline (not an actual wood species), which doesn’t seem to be very hard or dense. Its thickness helps provide some feeling and a good touch on slow hits.

The blade is definitely stiff (it produces noticeably high-pitched sound on ball impact with mild vibrations), but the surface is not hard. It may be misleading to rate it as an “allround” blade, as it exhibits high dynamics. For slow ball impacts, there is almost no catapult response from the blade, making it suitable for drop shots and pushes with various lengths. However, the dwell time is at most average.

Adding pace reveals the potential of the thick balsa core, with a steep but gradual increase in response. At higher gears, this blade even enables playing at solid OFF speeds, but a drastic reduction in dwell time is noticeable, meaning that looping ability will depend on the installed rubbers and your wrist technique. Thus, the blade does not really favor looping playing style. When looping with it, expect very flat and long trajectories.

The blade’s top speed is enough for stepping away from the table, but then looping will be even more difficult due to the short dwell time. For players who prefer varying pace suddenly, and win points by fast hits and precise placements (short pips users?), this could be a good blade to try. (My setup only consists of inverted rubbers though, weighing 171g in total out of the box (but three months later, 163g as the balsa core lost water) - I have Victas VJ 07 Stiff max on FH and VJ 07 Limber max on BH. With these rubbers, the blade feels perfectly balanced, and it is easy for my wrists.).

It is a light blade, faster than the average allround blade, and plays more like an off-blade.