Donic Waldner Black Devil Carbon Balsa

A black gem in the right hands.. Moved to this blade coming from Donic Epox Offensiv (5ply all wood) and what I felt upon first touch are: blade is considerably lighter (mine weighed around 84-85g) and immensely faster especially on flat shots/smashes. Head size is slightly smaller (about 2mm shorter than typical wood blades) and cutting/finishing is a bit rough. The Koto/balsa material is fragile, you can put on edge tape if you want. Just like its name, the BLACK DEVIL is a difficult blade to control. Expect a few bouncy, over the table hits when first using it. DO NOT use this blade if you just started out playing table tennis - use an all wood instead, stabilize basic strokes and control techniques first.. only then you can move to this blade if you feel confident enough... Personally, this blade is gonna be my stepping stone to further sharpen my techniques before I decide to get an ALC blade sometime in the future. Typically people will suggest to use medium/soft rubbers with this blade. I first put Donic Bluefire M2 and Yinhe Mercury 3 Euro Soft on FH/BH. Control is pleasant enough without compromising much speed. Close/mid distance to table plays are quick and deadly; however a problem persisted when playing far from table, my shots occasionally lacked power to go over the net with such setup, maybe it's the characteristics of softer rubbers or at that point I just simply wasn't skilled enough to control this blade ?. After a few intense weeks of taming this little devil.. I moved the M2 to BH and put Friendship (729) Battle 2 Provincial on the FH to turn the blade into a mid/far distance looping beast. Speed+super spin obliterated anyone who dared to put up their blade :) Yes, a hard Chinese rubber on a stiff/fast blade , either I am confident enough in my skill improvement or I am an outright table tennis masochist. LOL ?

Makes pong sound. Best balsa carbon looping blade. Easy to reverse spin. Really good close to the table. Much easier to use then say an alc blade.

Its not a blade for beginners, be sure of this. A hard balsa + carbon blade that works better with soft rubbers, I used a Acuda Blue P2 on FH and had no problems in smashes and blocking, but had difficulty in create spin because of the "zero dwell time", serves were just OK. Its very light, but a little bit small on the top of the head. I was tired of miss the table trying to loop and top spin, so I changed to a all wood blade, my game increased a lot. Maybe its because Im not a expert or professional player, but this blade is very difficult to dominate. I think its not a good for reverse penhold players because its really smaller than other blades, it increases de chances for the ball hit the fingers when the player tries to make a reverse shot.

Lot of people dont love the sound of the blade But i am in love with it :). I use it with Xiom Omega IV PRO fh and Xiom Vega Japan bh what i did not like about it was its face size .. its small.. but you will love the sound when you hit smash.. sound and speed :) you need good control and proper strokes to use this blade.

Had great hopes for this blade. After buying into carbon blades thought that balsa was going to save the day and give me the performance of carbon with the lightness of balsa. The one I got was 88grams so it was nothing like the quoted 80grams. !This blade was probably once of the worse blades that I bought. Had terrible trouble getting rubbers to stick to it. Handle was terrible and head size is small and the balance is a little off. Transferred the M1 rubbers over to it and they were too hard and didn't suit it at all. Did play against a guy who used this blade with T05s on both sides and he plays brilliantly but I couldn't get it to work. It's either a love or hate it blade.