It's likely to be quite soft pressed I guess if it is a high end RNS. I spent many happy hours knocking in my last Indian made bat and eventually gave in and had it knocked in professionally on a machine. Even after many hours of hammering by hand the ball still left seam marks. After machine knocking it was fine.
Question to the experts: do the automatic knocking machines degrade the quality of the bat compared to hand knocking?
And, what is the difference between a soft pressed bat that has been knocked in well and a hard pressed bat? Does the knocking in do something very different from pressing?
No idea about knocking in machines as I’ve never used one. To be perfectly honest, I’ve not knocked a bat in properly since I was about 14.
Knocking in and pressing aren’t the same thing. Pressing compresses the fibres, and the harder you press it, the longer it will supposedly last, and knocking in opens them back up. A soft pressed bat already has the fibres opened up, and is good to go pretty much straight away, although it won’t last as long. harder pressed bats take some time to reach peak performance.
Give me a soft pressed bat any day. Knocking in is such a faff, and some manufacturers such as GN press their bats so hard. Case in point, I bought a GN Legend a few months ago, and it’s a real beauty and will be magnificent, but it’s pressed so hard, and needs someone with more patience than I to bring the best out of it. I knocked it in against a BOLA for 45 mins, then gave it a whack with a mallet for 30 mins before getting bored and deciding to get rid.