In the last couple years I’ve been playing a lot of pickleball, so I’m going to start adding pickleball paddle reviews to Squash Source.
I recently did a video review of the Franklin Signature Ben Johns pickleball paddle, which you can check out here. There’s also a transcript of the video below.
Ben Johns since left Franklin for another brand (JOOLA) so this paddle is now named the Franklin Signature paddle. It comes in multiple colors.
Black
This is an image of the cosmetic I reviewed, which has Ben Johns’s signature on it.
White
Franklin Signature Pickleball Paddle Review
This is my YouTube review again, with a rough transcript below if you can’t watch a video right now.
What’s up guys it’s Pierre. I mentioned in the last video I’m gonna be adding a few non-squash updates. This is a pickleball paddle update. This is the paddle that I used for a long time and I used it in a couple of tournaments and I have a review of it.
This is the Ben Johns paddle from Franklin. He’s no longer with Franklin. Part of the reason I got this is because he had just left and these were on this was kind of on a discount sale and he’s now with Joola I think the brand is called but I tried out his prior paddle and actually I think Franklin still make this makes this, they just call it the Franklin Signature paddle and they just don’t have Ben Johns’s name on there.
He’s the number one pickleball player in the world or thereabouts or he’s a legend at any rate so but I have an update on his paddle.
I used this for a few months and found — luckily I happen to have a pickleball here — this panel you can’t see it but as you’re playing I could hear it. These have like a honeycomb pattern inside. I can actually show you because this grip will come off and I haven’t cut into the surface of the paddle but if I hit it with the ball in a certain way I will find you can hear that it is broken inside here somewhere and so on off center hits this particular paddle was just making like a pinging sound and not delivering a consistent hit and that happened after only a few months which was kind of disappointing and well you can’t really see the honeycomb you can this is the side of it but this is all kind of like a honeycomb sort of lattice shape and the whole paddle is made of that even down through the grip.
They’ve just put on some some sort of cushioning to get the grip to be more circular.
So I broke this. I thought well, it’s just bad luck. So I bought myself another one because I had a tournament coming up that I was playing and I wanted that I didn’t want to change paddles, I just wanted to have another one and that one lasted two days — two days — of playing before it broke in the exact same way. You could hear it hit on off-center hits and so this one I had for a few months. I didn’t do anything about it. The other one I bought through squash sorry through Pickleball Galaxy and they returned it no problem. That’s one of my affiliates. I wasn’t worried about getting my money back although this is Franklin’s fault not not Pickleball Galaxy’s fall but they’re still a good partner of mine.
Anyway they took it back but I wanted to say that so this paddle did not work out for me in terms of the consistency. They probably make these by the hundreds and thousands and hundred-thousands and so I have a feeling I just got like a bad batch somehow I got unlucky but that’s what happened to me with this with this paddle.
So one other thing I can tell you about this that I wasn’t expecting coming from squash to pickleball is the thickness of the handle was very unusual. So before I had been using a 13 millimeter paddle. This is a 16 millimeter thickness so it’s thicker than some others. A lot of paddles come in different thicknesses for the same ?? and the difference I like that the feeling of that off the surface of the paddle it’s a little deader than a than a thinner feeling paddle but I like the control and the kind of yeah I like the control that came that came with that.
The difference is that it it by very by very nature it makes the grip thicker because the the honeycomb the inside like extends all the way down through the grip so the grip’s thicker this way than a 13 millimeter paddle and it was too thick for me I found and also the grip because of this it’s like it’s like rounded and then flat on the sides and I just I didn’t love the feel.
I eventually got used to it but it’s something to keep in mind if you’re coming from another sport or even from another size pickleball racket — pickleball paddle. I’m gonna make that mistake a lot probably but the thickness of the paddle changes the thickness of the grip and it’s something you’ve got to watch out for and something that I’m not used to watching out for in squash rackets where you know the racket is what it is. Like you don’t have different grip thicknesses for the same exact like like all the Prince rackets seem to have the same exact grip. They don’t change like you know even within their models much less within a specific model you can’t get it in two different grip sizes so that’s something to watch out for.
Anyway that’s my review of the Ben Johns Franklin and now probably called the Franklin Signature racket. Just had some struggles with the with the construction. Liked the feel of it while I was playing with it.
Hope that was useful for you pickleball players out there. I’ll be back with some more soon. I’ll see in the next video. Bye
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