is it worth to spend that extra dollar or two to get the Red instead of the Blue? Or, pretty much the Blue is good enough that Red is not much better?
Depends on the batch. Normal Blues are good. Good Blues are very good. However, in the SoCal heat, we've recently gotten a few bad batches and they didn't play well. The Red has always been excellent, though. But, I agree, just get the Blue.
I have an order of both the Hi Qua Red and Hi Qua Blue coming from Hong Kong now. Will try them out and see the differences
Though in general the Blue is good enough, the Red is a more substantial shuttle. It flies very true, the feathers are select, thicker, more robust than the Blue.
Maybe the bad ones are duck. When the flu hit bad the one batch wasn't up to par, the the last batch was on par with As-40s.
Online, there are still some Hi Qua blues that are feather and duck. the duck if I remember correctly are about two bucks cheaper for the dozen, personaly, I'd just put the extra two in and get better shuttles.
As far as I know, all HiQua blue in US are goose feather. As Sir DinkALot said, there was a batch of bad one I also experienced about 2 month ago that die very quick and we stop using HiQua. We are switching to RSL torney #4 and Victor Torney1 for cheaper birds and Victor Champ#1 for good player enxt season. Sir DinkALot, please watch out for the order in late Aug.
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Thank you for the heads up. Interesting, they switch over to the new tube too. We are still using the old package here.
I know Goose is better.... but I hate to get something that I think is Goose shuttles but end up being a duck one.... and by the way, how can I tell is it duck or Goose?
Duck Duck Goose? Goose is usually bigger than duck and they sound different. OK, The truth is, it is hard to tell. If you take 2 shuttle, 1 duck and 1 goose, the goose shuttle usually has thicker shaft and the feather is usually cut nicer because the feather is wider for cut. However, the cheaper grade goose feather are tward the end of feather and looks almost same as the duck except you still get a nicer cut on the feather. This is just a general rule of thumb.
So far I know about US Hi-Qua shuttles are dif. from HK Hi-Qua. US one has 4 grade Red, Blue, Purple and Orange, all are GOOSE feathers. The HK one are Red, Blue, Green, Orange and Purple. with dif. presentation.