I recently did a video review of the Head Extreme Tour Max pickleball paddle. Here’s the paddle:
I’ve gotten into pickleball the last couple years and I’m starting to post pickleball articles. Here’s a rundown of the differences between pickleball and squash.
Here’s my video review of the Head Extreme Tour Max, plus an unboxing of the CRBN 1.
Rough Transcript
What’s up guys I have a review of the Head Extreme Tour Max pickleball paddle today. I’ve been using this for a few months. My prior paddle broke, if you saw my last pickleball paddle review, and so I ran up to the local sporting goods store in my town and I bought whatever they had available, which happened to be this Head paddle. It was a pretty good deal. I think it was 80 bucks when I bought it, 80 or 90. You can still get this and it’s actually I think a really good deal as far as the extent of pickleball paddles that I’ve tried so far.
It’s apparently a little bit on the heavier side. For me that’s not really an issue because if anything I put lead tape on this because I like my paddles to be a bit heavier. This has a very solid hitting surface. It’s a bit quieter than my last paddle, I have to say. It’s always loud, it’s a pickleball paddle, but the sound coming off of it was a bit deader.
It has this diamond shape so the the corners are sort of shaved off and I actually found that kind of satisfying compared to a more classic one where they’re rounded off like that. Just basically hitting it up in those corners doesn’t do you any good anyway. Those off-center hits just have no power or control really so this was completely fine as a way to reduce the weight probably is why they why they shaved off those edges.
The surface of this is not very gritty. It doesn’t feel gritty to the touch but I was able to generate decent spin off of this paddle. Just found it a good combination of power and control. Not a ton of spin but it was still more than I thought it would be just feeling the surface of the paddle.
It’s a good all-arounder and it worked well for me for a few months.
I decided to try out one of the newer paddles that is more designed to create a lot of spin. That’s one of the benefits of some of these newer paddles like the JOOLA ones that Ben Johns and others use. There’s a lot of spin and pop on those. Pickleball paddles are going through a sea change in technological innovation. Within the limits that are allowed in the game, they’re trying to generate more and more spin, more and more power. So I’m going to be swapping this out and testing it out against this paddle here which I’m going to unbox for you.
I decided to try the CRBN brand which is C-R-B-N. I’m gonna show you what it looks like. I’m gonna get my hands on it for the first time here. I just bought this through Pickleball Galaxy. You can get this paddle in a lot of different stores right now. It comes with its own zippy cover and here we go. Getting my feel of this for the first time. So supposedly the construction of this is online here: honeycomb polypropylene. So it seems like standard honeycomb construction of a pickleball paddle, though what this one was called (the Head) was “polymer”.
So I’m not really ready to cut into these to find out what the difference is. I think they’re both of a similar concept. I think the surface of this CRBN 1 is supposedly going to give me a lot of spin. We’re gonna have to try it out. This is the 13 millimeter CRBN 1. They have a couple different models and a couple different thicknesses.
So far I like the thickness of this grip. The 16 millimeter paddles I find them a little too thick especially since I like to put on an over grip over top. Just see how the grip feels on this CRBN. Yeah that’s nice. It’s the right size for me.
So we’ll be back. We’ll see how this CRBN 1 compares to the Head, whether I can generate more spin or not.
Overall, my feeling about this Head Extreme Tour Max paddle is: good deal for the money. You can still get this at a lot of different stores online and still in my neighborhood if you’re coming through Northwest Philly. So check it out: Head Extreme Tour Max, and we’ll be back later on I guess next season when pickleball returns with the CRBN 1 review.
Alright thanks, we’ll see you later — bye!
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