This Pickleball Paddle is Wild

What’s up, guys? Today we are talking about some upcoming paddles, my paddle of choice and setup and an Adidas paddle that doesn’t suck. Let’s dive in.

Sneak peek of a new paddle

For the most part, there haven’t been too many new ideas for Pickleball paddles. Everyone is racing to compete in price rather than new features.

Many of the thermoformed paddles are very similar, and as we all know, tons of the gen 1 raw carbon fiber paddles are nearly the same thing.

Well, there’s a new company called Oya (they are actually from Minnesota, my state) and they are launching 4 paddles. I want to talk about two today.

The Obsidian and Obsidian Max.

What makes them unique? They have absurdly long handles.

You might asking, how big would that be? 5.75”? 6.0”? 6.2”?

They regular Obsidian comes in at 6.25” and the Obsidian max comes in at a whopping 7.0” length handle.

I won’t lie, I was extremely skeptical of these paddles. I thought the face would be too small and the swing weight way too high.

Well, I’ve played 12 or so games and I actually really enjoy the Obsidian Max. I never had any issues with hand battles, blocks, or resets. The smaller face didn’t bother me at all.

The swing weight is also very low at 111, which is insane for a paddle with this long of a handle. It feels very whipy in hand.

I think this is a Tennis converts dream paddle. You get a handle that’s basically the length of a Tennis racquet. It’s thermoformed and raw carbon fiber.

I will say, the paddle feels very soft. It’s not a hard hitting paddle. I did try a setup with lead on the head and sides and that did increase the power a very noticeable amount though.

Do most people need a 7” handle? Absolutely not. I don’t even know if I would call it optimal. However, if you are someone with large hands, or a two-handed backhand without putting your finger on the back is very important to you, this is one of the only paddles that will do that with ease.

It’s nice to see a company step out of the norm and commit to something new even if it’s not best for the majority. Too many companies are trying to be a cheap knock off of everyone else.

Currently they are running a pre order sale for $152 and if you use discount code PBSTUDIO you can save 10% on top of that.

You can pre-order here

After my review hiatus, I plan to have a review of this paddle done in August. I’m much more impressed than I thought I would be, that’s for sure.

My paddle setup

I get a lot of questions about what my current paddle of choice is and my setup for the paddle. Below is how mine is setup.

My paddle of choice is the SixZero Double Black Diamond. For both singles and doubles.

I use a Tourna Mega Tac as the overgrip (Just one overgrip over the stock grip).

I use these lead tape strips and put one on each of the bottom corners (this adds 0.2oz total). Each strip weights 3g or 0.1oz. Very easy to carry around on court and apply it quickly without scissors, a scale, or ruler.

On my doubles paddle I have white electrical tape covering the paddle and on my singles paddle (I decided to use different ones for doubles and singles because the second one was more poppy) I use Pickleball Effects protective edge tape which is very similar to ProLite tape.

The swing weight on my doubles paddle is 117 and on my singles paddle it is 119. I think if I used my singles paddles for doubles, I would need to take off the PBEffect tape. I haven’t ran the stock numbers, but after applying his tape, the paddle felt a little slower in the hand than I usually prefer (as noted by 119 SW vs 117).

For singles the slightly higher swing weight isn’t a problem.

I did try (and really enjoyed) having lead tape on all 4 corners of the paddle, but it was too heavy and was hurting my wrist. The paddle was awesome for resets and put aways though.

Both paddles weigh 8.6oz.

The SixZero still continues to be my favorite paddle by quite a bit. It does everything I want it to do and the spin still seems to be holding up fantastic even after 3 or so months of use now. I haven’t reran the numbers, but in all my games I’ve never felt the spin was lacking.

I believe I heard that there will be a new shipment of DBD 16s coming in July. Hopefully people will be able to get their hands on them easier soon.

An Adidas paddle that doesn’t….suck?

Okay, this is probably the last thing you thought I would ever say, but I found an Adidas paddle that I’m actually a fan of.

That’s the Adidas Drive 2. It’s their $70 starter paddle. I ran a spin test on it the other day and checked a few results (Forgot to offload the file before deleting it though…) and the numbers were looking like they were going to be around 1600-1800 RPM.

That’s wild for a $70 paddle. While I wouldn’t call it special or market breaking, for $70 this might be one of the best paddles I’ve hit. I even played some 4.5 level games and had no issues using it.

If I was going to use it more, I think I would need to add lead tape. It could use some added stability.

But either way, when a paddle is $70 it doesn’t need to do much to be impressive. These are designed for people who are just starting and I could easily recommend this as a starter paddle.

It impressed me enough that I will probably make a short video about it after July.

Now…I wish I could say the same thing about the top tier Adidas paddle (the one that Rafa uses). I didn’t get to finish the spin test (deleted before offloading on accident) but the results were looking like they were going to be 900-1100 RPM.

Even when you play games, it’s very obvious that the spin sucks. Especially next to the $70 paddle.

I will say, I didn’t hate how the Adipower Attk 2 felt. I think it felt pretty good in the hand, but it’s a control paddle that wasn’t incredibly stand out. So now combine the poor spin and $200 price tag and I’m less than impressed.

My hunch is that the $150 Adipower Team paddle will get more spin and possibly power than the $200 Adipower Attk 2.

I can tell Adidas is trying and they are moving in the right direction. It might just take another iteration or two on their top lines to get it right.

🎙️ Latest podcast

If you missed it, I did another solo podcast where I dive into the content creator process, some new PPA pro rules, and go over some other paddle reviewers that you might want to check out when you don’t like my opinion. 😂