Today, the Super Heima Launches
Last March, the Yinhe Heima-tuned KLC launched — the first blade the Yinhe Blue-Gold Workshop custom-made for me. An inner structure, similar to the W968 and the Yinhe North Korean custom 520X. The rebuy rate is fairly high; many players were won over by its rare backhand explosiveness among inner blades and its overall sense of speed. Because of this blade, many players bought a Yinhe Blue-Gold Workshop product for the first time and became fans of Yinhe customs.
Later in July, we released the Heima-tuned ALC; at the end of December, the Heima-tuned PLC. Each time I had my own considerations and demands. But some players still doubted: are you not just making the “three illusory gods” — W968, Viscaria, Jun Mizutani ZLC? Actually, just a coincidence. Just say whether the KLC has more backhand explosiveness than the 968, whether the ALC is more ball-holding and comfortable than the Vis, whether the PLC is more solid and punchy than the Mizutani.
Although on the inner side I had the Heima-tuned KLC early, I still felt a bit of regret. When the forehand pairs a tensor, that spin is not extreme enough; that feel of biting the ball and then slamming it onto the table did not yet meet my demands. And how exactly to achieve a penetration different from the 968, with a super-fiber-like support? In this thinking, I kept looking at two blades: the Maharu Yoshimura Limited and the player custom Liu Shiwen won the 2019 Worlds with (forehand NEO blue national, backhand D05). I played both, and both were once my loves. Both are inner ZLC structures, with slightly different ply thicknesses. Strictly, Liu Shiwen’s player issue’s fiber is more like SUPER ZLC. I felt that just releasing an inner ZLC, even a Yinhe Blue-Gold Workshop custom, might not meet my high demands for support and clarity.
So in late November talks with Yinhe, I proposed: make an inner SUPER ZLC blade, but not a kiri core like the Tomokazu Harimoto SZLC — use an ayous core, taking the violence to the end. Besides, highlight “spinny enough, soft enough,” fixing the body thickness at around 5.8mm. Yinhe kept saying that making the ZLC line achieve this was difficult. Counting now, I have played this main blade nearly three months — an inner SZLC plus ayous core thin blade. In Yinhe’s dictionary, this is not called SUPER ZLC, but MAX ZFC.
It is called the “Yinhe Heima-tuned MAX ZFC.” The handle and face are about the same as the original Yazhi series. Thickness about 5.8mm. The Yinhe Blue-Gold Workshop is impressive — on this blade it achieved the clear ball-bite, fast energy storage and a higher level of bottom power I wanted. Achieving this on an inner structure is not easy. Clearly, the super-fiber and Yinhe’s custom craft both helped. Blades casually called SZLC on the market are not rare, but it seems only Butterfly’s SZLC is remembered. And this Yinhe Blue-Gold Workshop Heima-tuned MAX ZFC’s structure, the SZLC-plus-ayous-core combination, never appeared in Butterfly’s retail blades. It only appeared in Butterfly’s player-issue blades, a few of which I played, so I know their flavor and brought my demands to the Blue-Gold Workshop.
The flaw is that Yinhe Blue-Gold Workshop blades have never been cheap, and the MAX ZFC’s price is not low either. After much negotiation with the brand — the brand said under 1000 yuan really is unreasonable, after all it is SZLC — the Heima-tuned MAX ZFC was finally priced at 899 yuan.