: success with a paddle I modified by simply tearing the rubber from a
: cheap paddle and replacing it with a hard slick surface. The result was
: that spin from the opponent would not grab my paddle and I could play a
: much faster game. Of course, I couldn't put any spin on the ball at
: all.
: Is this type of paddle legal? Does any manufacturer make one like this?

No, it is not legal.
I could use this as an opportunity to point out the ironic situation
in table tennis, where it is totally legal to use a rubber that is
so tacky that it can actually pick up a ball and hold it upside down,
and that it can be wet with glue laced with solvents capable of stinking
up an entire gymnasium just so that the user can get a little more spin
or speed than the opponent, or that it can be composed of long pimples
that bend in wierd ways producing cryptic spins, and that one side of the
paddle can have a radically different surface than the other in order to
generate confusion, and that even though using bicycle glue to soup-up a
paddle is illegal it is rarely enforced except at the world level...
and yet someone who wishes to use just a plain bare wood paddle would
absolutely be forbidden, and how such a simple sport has gotten to this
state represents an "evolution" that has gone mad. But I won't

Scott