10/30: Pb Apes Charm, Enhance Duo, and B&B Loco

Oh man I played bad today hahaha. I blame the Charm… kind of joking but also not really… I almost got pickled twice and I think I barely won one game the whole night and that was when I switched to the loco. It also didn’t help that I felt pressured to need to make good gameplay content because I’ve started the challenge where people try to knock the figurine off my Tip Toppers hat but anyways let’s talk about the paddles.

The main paddle I wanted to hit today was the new Pickleball Apes Charm. It comes in 3 different shapes but I chose to only use the elongated X shape today because I wanted to hit it alongside the Duo. The only other paddle I brought was the B&B Loco so figured I would have an elongated play session.

I was pretty excited for the Charm since I was a fan of the Harmony and thought the Charm would be a true foam power paddle for Apes but this ended up not being the case. When I bounced the ball off the surface I knew it wasn’t going to have the power I was looking for. It had a more muted feedback; it felt more plush than the Harmony series and had a softer ball feel. The firepower of the paddle was more in the all court category and pretty comparable to the Harmonies. Now a foam all court paddle isn’t necessarily a bad thing but I was not a fan of the sweet spot in stock form. I felt the paddle twist a lot and many counters and blocks would just die off the paddle face. When I switched to using the Duo and Loco, I immediately felt a higher forgiveness rating on the latter two

I do appreciate Apes for trying something new with the construction but I just didn’t like the flex of the paddle and the smaller sweet spot. Though this is only day one so I’ll adjust with weight after i gather some metrics. I’ll also need to test the other shapes and see if the paddle breaks in and gains more power.

Day 2 of using the Duo and I still enjoy this paddle. It’s got good power with a denser and springier feel than most foam paddles. Its easier to control than most foam paddles because it does seem to absorb the impact more. I would place this in a similar realm to paddles like the Vatic Pro V-Sol Power since it doesn’t have that stiff feel but still provides good power. Now the one I received is on the heavier end for swingweight and Enhance did confirm that they sent me their heaviest one (I’d like to think it’s because they think I’m strong :D) so I felt I was getting some heavy drives. Pop on the other hand was lower than most foam paddles but overall I’m really liking this. Compared to the Loco I hit stronger drives and I had more control in the soft game but I did lose out on pop