If I’m buying a bearing I don’t get OD but I have no issue with them in the yoyos that come with one.
I think a lot of people are fooling themselves if they think there is a huge performance difference.
I actually even kind of like the fact that they are noisy. I think my friends are more impressed with tricks when they can hear just how fast it is spinning.
Any yoyo that I expect to spend a lot of time throwing–which pretty much means any One Drop I buy–is going to get a Boss Rage bearing put in it. However, sometimes a yoyo comes with a KK of some kind and I will often leave that in and save my Rages for future One Drops.
I keep flats on. There has been only one time i’ve considered to switch to a centering bearing is with the Dang 2, but just because that yoyo plays so damn fast and stable it can benefit to have a centering bearing to boost it’s performance to the max.
I usually leave the flat in there, those one drop bearings are just so smooth. I have a few where I changed to a centering bearing, the v-two and eclipse come to mind. I didn’t buy any new yoyo’s between ~2003 and last december, so I had only played flat bearings.
When I broke down and started buying new yoyo’s last year, I discovered centering bearings are a thing now. Yeah, they make a difference and I like them, but I’m just fine with flats.
So far it’s about two to one in favor of keeping the flat 10 ball in. I’m honestly surprised. I thought the number of switch outs would have been at least half and probably more. Props to you @da5id and @The_Machinist. You know your customer base.
Thanks. This is what we have been trying to say. Bearing choice is personal preference and our experience is that it’s about 50/50 so that changing to a different bearing wouldn’t solve the problem that about half of our customers are getting a stock bearing they don’t prefer.
Honestly I was kind of expecting this result. If there’s any company’s yoyos to use flats with, its OD. And people who are indifferent or don’t feel that strongly about it will just keep the flat in as well
A better question to ask is who swaps out the centering bearing in another companies yoyo for a flat especially companies that have a strong focus on competition designs like UNPRLD or YYR
I definitely don’t think flat swaps would be more common and the ratio would very likely be greater than 2 to 1