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”.
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.
