Most padel paddles you can buy today, even at the higher end of the market, are built from what the carbon industry calls 3K twill. The "K" stands for thousand. The "3" is the number of carbon filaments in each bundled tow that the weave is built from. A 3K cloth is, essentially, 3,000 microscopically thin strands of carbon braided into a single thread, woven into a fabric you can hold in your hand.
3K is fine. It is, in fact, more than enough for a paddle to perform competitively. Most touring professionals use it. Most premium brands market it. So why do we use 12K — four times the filament density, almost double the cost, considerably harder to work with — for every Prima Serie?
The honest answer is that the difference is small, and that the small difference is the entire point.
What density actually does
A carbon weave's job is to convert your strike into a transfer of energy to the ball, with as little energy lost to vibration, deformation, or thermal noise as possible. The denser the weave, the more parallel filaments are present at any point of impact, the more controlled the transfer.
In practical terms: a 3K paddle, struck firmly off-centre, will twist by a small but measurable amount before it returns to true. A 12K paddle, in the same conditions, twists less. You notice this not as power — both paddles can hit a hard ball — but as feedback. The 12K paddle tells you exactly where on the face you struck the ball. The 3K paddle tells you, approximately, that you struck it.
The denser weave does not make the paddle more powerful. It makes the paddle more honest.
A small comparison
The numbers, briefly, in case they are useful:
| Property | 3K Carbon (typical premium) | 12K Aluminised (Prestazione) |
|---|---|---|
| Filaments per tow | 3,000 | 12,000 |
| Density (g/m²) | 200 | 600 |
| Tensile strength | 3,500 MPa | 4,900 MPa |
| Stiffness (modulus) | 230 GPa | 295 GPa |
| Twist under off-axis load | ~1.4° | ~0.7° |
| Manufacturing waste | ~6% | ~14% |
The 12K weave is meaningfully more demanding than a 3K weave — slower to lay up, less forgiving of imprecise cuts, and we will not ship a paddle that includes a piece of carbon we are not satisfied with. Could we use 3K instead? Yes. The paddle would be lighter to make, easier to mould, faster to finish, and almost as good. But "almost as good" is exactly the line we are trying to step over.
The aluminium oxide layer
Pure carbon, even at 12K density, has a faintly rough surface and a deep matte black colour that — to our eye, after living with it daily for two years — does not look quite right under the gold motif of the Prima Serie. We tried it. The motif sat on top of the carbon rather than belonging to it.
The solution, found in collaboration with the Lecco mill, was to press a layer of aluminium oxide between two thin sheets of finishing veil, bonded to the outermost ply of the layup. The result is a surface that is still 99.6 % carbon by weight but reads, visually, as a deep, almost-metallic green-black. The gold sits in it, rather than on it. It is the smallest aesthetic intervention we make in the paddle, and it is the one we are most quietly proud of.
The aluminium oxide also has, by happy accident, a useful structural property. It distributes vibration across the face slightly more evenly than uncoated carbon, which means the small frequency of resonance at impact — what Elena calls the paddle's "ring" — is more uniform across the playing surface. The result is a paddle that feels the same near the rim as it does in the centre, which is rare in our category.
Why 12K is also a constraint
I want to end by being honest about the trade-off, because every material decision in a paddle is a trade-off and we do not wish to pretend otherwise. A 12K paddle is heavier than a 3K paddle of the same dimensions. Ours is 360 to 375 grams; a comparable 3K design might weigh 340. For a player who likes a very light paddle — typically players with longer rallies and a defensive style — this is a real disadvantage.
The Prima Serie is, deliberately, not a light paddle. It is a paddle that asks the player to swing it with intent. The 12K weave is one of the reasons it can. If that is not what you want from a paddle, we will say so honestly: this may not be the paddle for you. We would rather you knew that now than after the paddle is in your hand.
For everyone else, we believe — with the qualified confidence of two years of building — that the additional density is worth what we charge for it. The paddle is more honest. The feedback is sharper. The face is quieter under load. And the gold, finally, sits in the carbon the way we always meant it to.