Braydon's Jade Elongated 16mm Setup

Why this setup?

Lightweight elongated paddles are very playable stock these days, but they can still benefit a lot from fine-tuning the weight and balance. This one took me a while to figure out, but once I found the right setup, I liked the paddle a lot more, and it was already good to begin with. Adding weight low on the paddle gave it a nice stability boost and made the sweet spot feel larger and more forgiving. But something about the balance still felt a little off. Adding just a one-inch strip of my half-gram tuning tape near each top corner fixed that. I think because the Jade starts out so light, adding weight only to the lower portion made it feel almost too light through the swing. That small amount of weight higher up brought everything back into balance. The result is a paddle that still has a below-average swing weight for an elongated, but with a great sweet spot, solid plow-through, and a more natural balance. If you prefer a heavier setup, I'd replace those top pieces with 1g or 1.5g strips and potentially move them a little higher so they wrap around the top corners and extend down the sides. That would give you a little more weight behind the ball while keeping the stability benefits of the lower weight placement.