25+ years ago, I paid about $100 for a Butterfly New Chinese carbon penhold blade. That was the best carbon penhold blade I have ever owned and it lasted 20+ years until it started falling apart and I could not find the same blade anywhere. Butterfly did name another of their penhold blade New Chinese but it was not carbon and was worthless. I even tried their more expensive Chinese carbon penholds and Japanese penholds and found them all unsatisfactory. I tried other brands and they were all equally bad until I found the Ma Lin Carbon Penhold. With the Yasaka Mark V or Yasaka Xtend on one side and Dr. Ns long pit rubber on the other, it proves to be a great combination. This blade greatly improves my forehand which was almost non-existent before because my backhand was simply much stronger. When I first used the blade with X-tend rubber 1.8 glued with speed glue before it was outlawed, wow, I could hear the loud impact sound of the blade hitting the ball. My forehand was 10 times more powerful. Now, before I used it, I did have to chip down both top ends of the blade near the handle so I could get a better grip with my fingers. I also do not like its handle too long and too thick and I would like the shape of its blade to be more narrow like that of a Japanese style penhold. I also found that only the regular Ma Lin carbon is good, the soft ones are simply not good at all too soft. While it was labeled on the blade as made in Sweden, I have heard that some of that might be made in China with a few being made in Japan, but I could not confirm it this is true. In short, this may be the best carbon Chinese penhold blade one can buy at this time. More expensive penhold blades are just expensive gimmicks. Also, I would not want to make the same mistake again and had bought four of this blade so far.
Bill C
