We remember well the time we said we do not use composites. Now we can reveal the reason was not the lack of expertise or workflow on processing composites. OSP blades has been always famous of the unique feeling and ball touch from the time we started to make table tennis blades. We simply did not want to branch out composite blades that kills the feeling and our legacy.
“We must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy”
Albus Dumbledore
Albus Dumbledore said this in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and he was right. We knew we have chosen the right path with our composite projects and we knew we stepped on a hard track. We had only one goal: If we make a composite blade it must represent the OSP legacy. This means we wanted to mix only the advantages of composites and wood and it took definitely more time to develop so our way on that track that Dumbledore mentioned was longer to cross the finish line.
Two parts of players
It took years of research and experiment to publish our first carbon blades and another 3 years to release our aramid-carbon blades (spoiler: yes, blades in plural). At the first time we felt that mass production companies made their composite blades first and found the marketing texts later, because implementing carbon is significantly increase stability of production workflow and results damping, glass-like blades. But finally, a part of the market reacted well for these blades and the marketing of these big companies did the job well. Anyway, now we know two part of table tennis players. One likes rigid damping feeling the others do not. We focus on the second part.
The result
We created our first blade with aramid-carbon mixture in the late 2019 and after one-year insider testing we released in late 2020. We made The Virtuoso AC for those who are looking for more offensive solution than all wood Virtuoso. This blade provides sharp spins and stiffer behaviour, but the feeling is still 5ply. Due to the 2020-layer structure and special building process it collaborates well with built in glue effect rubbers and poly ball.
The secret revealed
By using an extra mix of Aramid and Carbon we got the result represents OSP: Carbon provides stiffness while the Aramid regulates feeling. With that composition we succeeded to add extra spin power that nowadays we need with poly balls without losing the wooden feeling. By inserting the AC next to the core, we retained the legacy model construction.
