ok so i got this alchemy nimbus in the mail today(oh shoot i already put a wee little ding in it) and its awesome. ive never heard about them before but it feels really good. it wld be much better if it had a c size bearing but its still awesome. very very unresponsive but vibey. what is your opinions?
Awesome yoyo, one of my favourites, I’ve tried a few of them and they have all been dead smooth. I run them with a clean bearing and one pad. Awesome.
My memory may be a bit fuzzy, but the history goes something like this:
Some time ago (2004/5?), a guy called Jaco wondered what would happen if you took an old Russell yoyo and flipped it inside out. What he ended up with was the first H-shape that I am aware of, before Hspin, before anyone. Around the same time, other manufacturers also started working on and prototyping H-shapes (YYF - G5, Hspin - Envy).
Jaco made a couple of prototypes, including a “reversible” yoyo, a bit like the No Jive but more aggressive (more H-shaped). You could set it up to look like a Russell and loop, or screw the halves the other way to have an unresponsive H-profile. I seem to remember it working… the problem was that it was just a bit too heavy to be a good looper, and just a bit too light to be a good 1A yoyo.
After this, Jaco had a couple of H-profile prototypes made with 1A in mind, but quickly realised that an aggressive H-shape was a bit of a nightmare - all the prototypes he had made had a bit of vibe… So, he went back to the drawing board, tweaked the design and made the profile slightly less aggressive to smooth out all the kinks.
I can’t remember which one was released first (fairly sure the Envy came out before the Nimbus, but they weren’t too far apart), but Hspin came out with the H-profile (Envy), which was very heavy and vibed so much you thought you were in San Francisco, and Alchemy (the brand Jaco was releasing some his designs under) came out with the Nimbus, a tweaked, much less aggressive H-profile that was smooth and didn’t vibe.
The Nimbus didn’t receive much attention at all, while the vibey and technically “flawed” Envy was all the rage. That’s what you get for being ahead of the curve…
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Your memory is fuzzier than a dump truck full of kittens if it’s screwing up your definition of vibe that much.
I’m not sure why mine vibes then because it was mint when I got it.