Johnkew Newsletter · July 5, 2026 · 9 min read

4,000 RPM Pickleball + Lead Tape Data

We played real games with ping-pong rubber paddles, then took two big sweet spot myths into the ball cannon lab.

By John Kew. Independent, lab-tested, no pay-to-play.

Pickleball News

New Paddle Database Updates

A batch of new tools just landed in the paddle database and Comparison Lab: the Feel Chart, an interactive stiff to soft, dense to hollow grid that plots up to three paddles at once, speed gauges for firepower and KewCOR, thumbs up and down voting, view counts, popularity sorting, and trending sections for the last 24 hours, week, and month. It is the most measurable the database has ever been.

20% Off PPA Tickets in Arizona and Las Vegas

Code JOHNKEW gets you discounts through July 27 on two PPA events. The PPA Arizona Open, September 14 to 20, is 20 percent off courtside and VIP, then 15 percent, plus 20 dollars off registration. The PPA Las Vegas Open, September 28 to October 4, has the same structure.

Paddles of the Week

Pickle Poppers Pop N Treasure

180 dollars, or 153 with code, at 8.0 oz static, 120.7 swing weight, and 6.2 twist weight. It is a 16mm full foam paddle with a buttery feel, stiff and hollow on the Feel Chart, with an Evergrit surface whose durability testing is still pending. Adding 3 gram pods at 9 and 3 brought the twist weight to just under 7.

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X-ray

HEAD Boom Pro EX15

200 dollars, 15mm full foam, elite tier spin over 2,300 RPM, with a twist weight under 6 stock. It is average power and average feel with a noticeable hot spot, so it wants perimeter weighting, around 5 grams per side, and it lands in the dense and stiff quadrant of the Feel Chart.

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X-ray

Notace Koto 1 Shoes

165 dollars at 290 grams, the lightest court shoe I have tested, with zero toe drop, a wide toe box, and minimalist construction. It delivers maximum court feel with minimal cushioning and structure. Eddie loved the connectedness; I found it too minimal for my damaged feet. Know your feet before you buy.

Tales From the Ball Cannon

Test 1: Does Breaking the Spin Ceiling Break Pickleball?

We put ping pong rubber paddles, over 4,000 RPM through an elastic snapback, into real doubles games. What we found: a massive adjustment period, slice becomes a killer shot, topspin dips less than you would expect, the sweet spot covers the entire face, and flipping the paddle mid swing is hard. Rubber democratizes extreme spin, but leveraging it takes a different skill set. We disagree on whether pros would simply absorb it as one more variable.

Test 2: Lead Tape vs the KewCOR Curve

We added 5 grams per side to the dead zones on a Paddletek TKO-CX 12.7 and re-measured the KewCOR curve down the face.

The finding: lead tape improves your lateral sweet spot, it does not reshape the centerline power curve. Lateral forgiveness is real, but it is measured by twist weight, not KewCOR.

Test 3: Thinner Paddles and Dwell Time

High speed camera dwell measurements at 60 mph impacts came in remarkably close across very different paddles.

Deflection, the force needed for a 1/16 inch depression, told the real story.

Thinner foam paddles pocket more deeply, even when the raw dwell time barely moves. That is why I want to retire the phrase dwell time and measure pocketing instead. It is the thing you actually feel.

What's Up Next

Coming up: Spartus Spitfire and Pop N Treasure Evergrit durability verdicts, lead tape applied to the KewCOR peaks rather than the dead zones, and pocketing added as an official database metric with measured vibration frequencies. See you in the next one. Cheers. John

Explore the data behind these verdicts in the paddle database and the Comparison Lab. This issue was originally sent to subscribers on July 5, 2026.

I test every paddle independently, with no payment and no editorial input. The buy links above are affiliate links, and if you use them I earn a commission that helps support the website. It never changes how a paddle is tested or where it lands in the data. Read more about how I test.