Customizing a Pantera Bachi

Store/Sales
#1

Hey, folks, been playing for about two years now with an instructor learning ozashiki style & hoping to pick up a Pantera bachi as an upgrade to the plain plastic I’ve been currently using. Two big questions about the configuration options:

1 - Size
The bachi I currently play with is about 203mm tall by 114mm wide (I’ve got slender, but really long fingers, wear large-sized gloves). It looks like all the Pantera bachi are… wildly smaller, with the largest at 167mm x 93mm (30mm shorter, 20mm narrower). Big-handed folks, has the large size been enough?

2 - Hardness
I love the idea of going with a softer edge, so I’m thinking of going with the “Soft” option. Knowing that I can’t exactly try one of these out before investing in it, just curious about folks’ experiences between “Medium” and “Soft”.

Thanks!

#2

Hi-ho.

Ozashiki as in Osazshi-asobi, yeah? Interesting to learn that! A bachi measuring 20.3 x 11.4 would not be out of place in minyo circles at all.

(It correlates roughly with the 40 size plastic produced by TOA
https://item.rakuten.co.jp/tres-lineas/b00006/).

Anywho.

Pantera bachi are mostly made with tsugaru in mind and are built to meet that form factor. As you’ve noticed, they clock in around 16 cm long and just under 9 cm wide. They also sport the beveling found in modern tsugaru and Tsuyama style jiuta bachi, and likely missing on what you use.

The hard / medium / and soft play experiences are difficult to articulate. None of them are very slappy; the soft is similar to my regular tsugaru bachi; the hard is glassier. It reminds me of the first bekko bachi I got, before I went at it with sand paper.

You can find a review by Reigen here:

And here is the regular site.

#3

Thanks for this info - I’ll muse on it, and will double-check with my instructor before placing my order. Thank you!

© 2020 Kyle Abbott