There is an undisputable fact about Dr.Neubauer products. His products have quality and durability. They are expensive – even expensive than butterfly products. Whatever his products carry - good or bad – a good percentage of the players say he makes junk rubbers. If you don’t understand what junk means, it does not mean poor quality products, but it is about the long pips rubbers that he produces having no friction. The next question is, why he does have to make a friction rubber like Domination if he does not like friction? The Domination rubber is an inverted rubber, and naturally it has friction – you can only reduce or increase the friction level on the rubber. I find it more reasonable when I say his customers like his products, so might have demanded inverted friction rubbers too – one shop for all rubbers. I’m not coming to say Dr.Neubauer Domination is a crappy rubber, but a good rubber with plus and minus which you should know.
Sponge
The sponge has yellowish color. The sponge is medium soft. The sponge is well glued to the rubber. I speed glued the rubber, as well as used the regular glue on this rubber to put on the blade. I could not see any glue build up after many applications of glue. I did not see any damages to the blade also - the rubber will come out from the blade easily.
Rubber
I did not find this rubber as “very” sticky. The rubber as well as the sponge has speed glue effect – according to the manufactures claim. I found out that the speed of the rubber has increased tremendously without losing control when I applied speed glue to the 1.8 mm rubber. I always had to adjust a little whenever I’ve applied speed glue on other brand rubbers, but Domination is pretty good at control. Without applying the speed glue, this rubber is slow. I played against some players who are using WD-40. Since the rubber is not that tacky, the balls fell through the rubber sometimes. In the first few days, I had the ‘click” sound after the speed glue applied, but slowly that sound disappeared.
I also tried Domination 2.0 mm tuned. This rubber comes in an aluminum foil. As soon as I opened, I could sense a speed glue smell in the room. The tuned rubbers don’t require speed glue application. The rubber has excellent speed, control and “click” sound.
I don’t recommend cleaning this rubber with any rubber solution. To clean the rubber, please use water only. The shiny surface of this rubber will slowly disappear when you apply any rubber cleaning solution.
Looping
This rubber is good for close to the table looping. You can make very low arc loops which help you from your opponent hitting back. Against underspin, I was able to loop well and create low arc loops. However I was not able to loop well below the table level. This is because the rubber can’t generate high arcs. What I love about this rubber is that the flips and over table smashes can be done very well. The rubber is not that sticky and you can smash it well with an open racket – the opponent can’t judge the speed when I hit with the 2.0 mm tuned rubber. The side spin loop was very spiny when the rubber was glued – the returned balls had between 35 to 60 degree of turn which is so dangerous to handle. I think it is the quality of the rubber which makes such spin not the tackiness.
Hitting
This rubber is very good for hitting. This may be because the tackiness is less, and ball can go deep into the blade. I love hitting the short balls that fall close to the net. You can flip the ball to any direction and smash it especially when the ball rises or at the peak of the bounce. I was able to hit higher balls and after it hits the table, it generates a low arc which is hard for the opponent to return. Blocking the smashes make a very low arc return. Hitting with 2.0 mm tuned rubber creates extra speed.
Chopping
I was not satisfied by its chopping effect, but very much with the push strokes. The push strokes can go just below the net level stopping the attacking from your opponent, but can’t generate much underspin. Blocking with chop go well too but can’t generate good underspin. The chopping requires more tackiness, and this rubber is not good at that.
Serves
I tried different kinds of serves with this rubber. I was not that satisfied by the amount of underspin 1.7 mm or 2.0 mm rubber could generate. The long underspin serves I tried could not generate much spin. I was severely punished for such serves. I should have tried the rubber by applying some spinmax on the rubber, but haven’t tried it out because I don’t use any rubber applicators anymore. I was able to serve very short serves with this rubber – excellent control where the ball can be hit on the table.
The successful serves I could do against the opponents and earn more points was side underspin.
Durability
The rubber is pricy. The durability is like 2-3 months if you play 3 hours every day. To increase the durability, clean the rubber with clean water and don’t apply any rubber cleaning solution. Keeping the paddle in a paddle case also will help to keep the dust and moisture off.
The glue effect of the tuned rubbers can be maintained for months by using a tuned box like “Pressure Box” from Dr. Neubauer. I will write about the “Pressure Box” in a future article.
Who should buy this?
A looper who loves law arc and the glue effect should try the Domination 2.0 tuned rubber, and don’t worry about the speed glue at all. If you are a close to the table hitter, you should surely try this rubber.
Drawback
Once you remove the ‘Tuned’ version of the rubber from the blade, the rubber will shrink, and will not fit the blade again. The manufacturer claims the rubber will expand again once it was put back on the blade - to me that did not happen naturally. To make the rubber fit the blade again, stretch the rubber while you put on it - start from the bottom of the blade, and stretch the rubber to upwards first and then sideways. You will not lose any quality by doing this. You can also cut the rubber little bigger than the size of the blade, remove from the blade a day later, and put it back again. After you try this two or three times, you can easily figure out the size the rubber that needed to be cut.
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