Yes: the Thruster rackets are one of the most exciting rackets to play with for just this reason. If you like damped feeling, then Yonex are probably the best at that.
Not everybody has joints and tendons made of titanium Also - is there any rise in quality on the horizon where their shuttles are concerned? Just played the first day of a tournament where Victor shuttles have to be used, and holy **** are they crap. Completely useless. Inconsistent speeds throughout, and the durability is aweful. One or two hard hits and they either get soft or are immediately destroyed by losing feathers or their shape. Lost several rallies because I smashed a shuttle to **** and was forced to lift first afterwards...and we're talking about the Champions, not even the Service or Maxima, which dont survive any smash. Be glad if they lose only one feather, that is if you even get them slowed down enough to play at all. I'd be very interested to hear a reason why they're so far behind the competition in the respective price brackets (mostly Yonex for the higher tier shuttles, Oliver for the training grade ones).
That's why we have so many different rackets available. I've never played with the Champions, but the Queen and Maxima shuttles are respectable here. They're not consistent, but they're not in the same price range either. As for breaking them on your smash... that might just be your technique
Tbh my experience with champions is that they're ****. I would never give them the time of day here. I don't even think I hit hard and I can still break 1-2 feathers on a fresh shuttle with a full power smash. And this is champion no. 1. The so called best. Their only shuttles I ever bother to buy and use now are master no 1 and ace.
Yeah its my technique. Because that makes a huge difference.....jeez. You gotta be kidding me. Even a fast sliced drop should not kill a shuttle, let alone a clean, straight smash. Questioning the technique first thing is a pretty arrogant move....can you afford that? Are you THAT much better than me? (Are you better in the first place? ) Btw, just warmed up lightly with 2 Maxima for ~10 minutes - one's a complete ruin and the other one's barely good for service training. We didnt even do a smash drill or anything....those shuttles are a complete joke What's the price point of their Ace or whatever it's called relative to the Champion?2-3$ more?
The champions #1 (green) used to be good for the price. But the quality went downhill 2 yrs ago. Now I'm also playing with Master Ace (blue), but my most recent batch is worse than previous one. Similarly another brand HangYu #1 that I used to play with for years have gone downhill few yrs ago, hence the switch to Victor. Somehow they're not making geese like they used to...
The weird thing is that our Oliver shuttles (both training and competition grade) havent degraded like that. Neither have the Yonex, as far as I can tell (pretty rarely used around here)...
Idk man. I tried champion no1 coincidentally once every year over the last 4 years all to the same result. They flew too fast even at the right speeds for the climate and the broke far far too easily for my meager power. Literally running through 3 shuttles a game every time. Guess victor's oem get geese from a different supplier?
@j4ckie perhaps we have different expectations? I expect a set to use 1.5 shuttles, approx. Perhaps you've been given older batches by your supplier? PS. I wasn't really questioning your technique; it's just hard to find reasons for a shuttle to break on a normal smash. Although if you live direction Belgium, we can find out who's better ;-)
Oops I just noticed this hehe. Price difference here is about 10-15SGD depending on your source and quantity of purchase. The master ace is supposed to compete with the AS50 but IME they're far more like AS40s. You just can't beat the 50s for their value
I expect roughly the same, 2-3 shuttles per doubles game, a bit less for singles. At least in recreational tournaments like this one, maybe a bit more for league matches. And then theres these Victor shuttles....nobody in our class uses the Maxima, and even with the Champions we used 6 in a very one-sided match. And I wouldve changed even sooner if it was remotely close, we played at least 6 rallies with soft shuttles.
Beats the Aerosensa 10 where we used 14 shuttles for a singles match. Admittedly we had a fast hall, so had to crack every 4th, and it was really dry, which shuttles don't seem to like.
AS10 are Duck feathers, not goose. But even the AS20 beat every Victor shuttle I've ever used - have no experience with the Ace though
Just before I left Glasgow we tried a few tubes of Victor Champions and found them a big improvement over Yonex AS30's and in our opinion better than the AS40s. They were more durable and flew better for longer. We got through about 2 1/2 tubes of AS40s in a club session and one tube of Victor Champions. Yet two years previous they weren't good at all. They didn't break they just became very slow after a few points. Now the AS40s should not be that bad which make me think that they had been stored in a bad location. The shop we got the AS40s from is in a badminton hall where the temperature change is quite extreme, whereas we got the Victor Champions from a different supplier. Maybe the same happened to wherever the Victor shuttles were stored for your tournament? Unfortunately I left before I got a chance to test the theory by buying some AS40s from somewhere else. Then again shuttle quality control is in general all over the place recently. Even with high end shuttles (AS40, RSL no.1 tourney and Yehlex Premiership) there have been one or two shuttles which have been useless as soon as we got them out the tube. All from different suppliers as well so it isn't even a shop storage issue.
I've taken to using separate shuttles for competitive and club play: Victor Queen/RSL 4 for club, and the AS20 for competitive play. The 20 IS much better, but the price is also 50% more.
RSL No.1 has always had weak durability, since I started playing actually (2010). The Champions were decent at one time, but in the last half year I haven't played with one that lasted even half a game. 2nd match used up 7 shuttles, btw. 2 games.
Keyword being a lot - I spoke of breaking them with a single smash. But you're welcome to have a look at my footage, just look at my forum activity and you'll see my recent posts in the video thread. The opinion on the shuttles was shared by everyone in the 'A' category I talked to today, btw....and the main reason why I spoke up about this is because it's so inconsistent with every other shuttle brand I've played in the last year, and I hit them all the same - with the same technique, good or bad. Thing is, these ain't cheap. 24€ per tube today....so each match we played cost 12€ in shuttles (we averaged 6 broken shuttles per match, all in 2 games ).
You can break them in a single smash if you mishit. That's all I was saying. Never once said that you mishit a lot. And I've seen your videos, you're basically the only one that posts in there. So sad, I enjoy watching games. But that's unrelated. Haha Sent from my LG-D852 using Tapatalk