Hi all, I need some help. My club normally has been using Yonex AS40's in the past and then we dropped down to AS30's but in recent years Yonex has increased their prices quite a bit. We are looking at alternatives but I only want decent goose feather shuttlecocks that have full cork bases. We use about 150 dozen shuttles per year so the price of a dozen do really matter. I know Victor Gold Champion is a good alternative but they too have increased their prices recently. Does anyone know of any other brands with decent shuttlecocks that have a full cork base. I don't want any sandwich corks or composite bases as I have found them to be rubbish and the cork dents and implodes on itself. Just to give you a comparison of the cheapest prices I can get in the UK currently: AS40's - £21.19 AS30's - 17.89 Victor Gold Champion - £16.99 Just so you know, I've tested the whole Yehlex range, the feathers themselves are decent on the higher range but they have triple sandwiched corks which is disappointing. I have also tried the whole Babolat range with no joy once again. Any help would be appreciated. Kindest regards, -Ajay- Quote of the Day Anger is the feeling that makes your mouth work faster than your mind.
I don't know how many tubes you could get ahold of, but I'd recommend trying a tube or two of Li Ning's A300 shuttle. £18.40 a tube, couldn't recommend them highly enough. Full cork base, durability can match AS50s. Good flight quality. I found Yehlex's shuttles broke despairingly easily. An alternative comes from Bauhinia Sport. They're similar to the Yehlex shuttles in terms of production, but I found them to be more durable. They're considerably cheaper than Yehlex shuttles. Victor Gold Champion don't meet your requirements, they do not use an all natural cork.
Victor Gold Champion have downgraded to sandwich cork? Damn, I hate when manufacturers do this but the price of shuttecocks go up. Charlie I need the price to be below £17.89 as that's the current price we are paying right. Kindest regards, -Ajay- Quote of the Day Anger is the feeling that makes your mouth work faster than your mind
I really don't think you're going to find one under the cost of the AS30s. The A300s are a bit more durable and you might get through less of them, but the AS30s are the cheapest I know of with an all natural cork and goose feather. Everything under that compromises by using lower grade feathers (or duck feathers) or otherwise composite bases.
I don't know enough about them, but maybe a Forza shuttle? I've not tried them, nor can I find information on what base they use or anything.
Oh I've tried them also, Forza VIP is rubbish, the cork is part cork, the rest the shavings you get which causes the cork to dent badly. For £16.30 its terrible. Kindest regards, -Ajay- Quote of the Day Anger is the feeling that makes your mouth work faster than your mind.
What your definition of full cork? Complete one piece of cork or just no synthetic layers? I need to open up one of the VGC to see. Tried one tube of AS30 as a comparison and even if VGC is composite cork, it still beats AS30 in every department for me. The only problem with VGC is it does fly a little too fast initially.
Complete one piece cork. I think the VGC is now two piece but all cork. When I used VCG last year, they were full cork as I cut open the batches we had and all were full one piece cork. Kindest regards, -Ajay- Quote of the Day Anger is the feeling that makes your mouth work faster than your mind.
The Ashaways range is all composite corks right? The 450, 500 and Pro-G. Kindest regards, -Ajay- Quote of the Day Anger is the feeling that makes your mouth work faster than your mind.
Yeah, the 500 has pretty bad flight. The 450 has better flight but worse durability. The 450 has the better cork tbh, the 500 has that awful plywood-like shaving cork in it.
Thought so, thanks for the clarification. It's a shame that there isn't much competition to Yonex for the decent shuttlecocks. Also to explain the reason I'm insisting on full one piece cork base is my club repairs shuttles and the ones with full cork are the easiest ones to repair, the others fall apart when trying to repair. In a typical season we repair 20-30 dozen so a typical saving of £300-500 is achieved so it all matters. Kindest regards, -Ajay- Quote of the Day Anger is the feeling that makes your mouth work faster than your mind.
As I said, give the A300s a try. One or two tubes won't cost an arm and a leg to see if you like them. While I appreciate budget, with the A300s outlasting AS40s, you might use less shuttles in the first place. I've had these shuttles last multiple games with minimal damage, and some county players I train with have done smash drills on them for 20 minutes without breaking them. If you don't get on with them, I'd recommend switching to the AS50. Again they cost more, but they will last longer than the 30s, and if it means you only use 1 shuttle per game instead of 2, that's a big saving in itself.
I've invested in a dehumidifier and will test that this season to see how many shuttles we use, so far it seems to prolong the life of the shuttle so that's good news. I would do that if it was up to me but our treasurer is a stickler for money and its hard convincing him to spend more to save more in the long run. I will buy a tube to test myself. Kindest regards, -Ajay- Quote of the Day Anger is the feeling that makes your mouth work faster than your mind.
Ouch, not even enough for 1 spare tube to try? But yeah, I find that AS30s are quite delicate. Usually 2 per match needed, which is quite costly. For the most part I don't train at clubs, I train with a small group of people. We don't have subs etc. so I end up buying a lot of the shuttles personally, which as you can imagine is very costly. I'm therefore very particular about which shuttles I'll buy, and I found the A300s to be the best priceerformance available for all natural cork and goose feather.
I am a big fan of the Carlton GT1's, there flight quality and durability is as good if not better than the AS40, and at a lower price than the AS30 (around £16.99 a doz). The Aeroplane Green Label is also a good quality shuttle for club games. It is comparable to the AS30 in terms of durability and slightly lower feather quality. But its significantly cheaper at around £12-14 per dozen. I'm not entirely sure about the corks used, but they worked were perfectly fine for me.
We went from RSL #1 to GT1 to VGC. Probably went through at least 5+ tubes of GT1 and the consistency was all over the place in terms of durability. Sometimes you can get a shuttle that refuses to die no matter how many mishits you do or feathers fly off in batches from the slightest misfit. I take it you import your Aeroplane shuttles?
I haven't had much problems with the GT1 so far but I know the quality of goose feathers in general lately has been quite poor than in previous years. I often go abroad to Thailand, so I buy a few doz of RSL Silvers and Aeroplane Greens to bring back, which is the most popular shuttle over there for clubs and training. So yes.
