brass isnt a stainless metal; tarnishes very quick. i dont think its very appealing to have a ring on your yoyo thats turning green
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Yup.
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Brass weight rings are stinky. It’s not really a marketing ploy. They stink. Using brass instead of steel sucks because it smells like a doorknob after interacting with skin for any period of time.
My INSTANT reaction to learning of the BiND was “wow cool so the brass won’t stink”
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Let’s see…
https://forums.yoyoexpert.com/search?q=brass%20smell
Even on the open internet you can’t find much about brass smell, except in the case of musical instruments and doorknobs where there is a LARGE item that is ALL BRASS and it’s handled extensively with your 
s. Heck for musical instruments that are brass you’re often putting your slobbery 
all over it too 
None of that is really true about yo-yos with brass rings…
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Honestly YYF prob did this to show new tech. Manufacturing advancements.
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Yeah you’re right YYF just lied for no reason
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I wouldn’t say it’s lying… it is definitely marketing. You decide which is which 
I generally support cool new techniques, but c’mon. This one literally does not pass the smell test.
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the point is… it looks cool
all innovation should be accepted in my opinion; i really like the design of the BiND
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I’ll provide a specific example and you can form your own opinion. Purchase a Sturm Panzer Stealth Ogre and use it extensively. Bring it places with you. Sweat on it. Your hands will stink, the yoyo will kinda stink, stuff it touches in your pocket will kinda stink.
Everything around you will smell like loose change and doorknobs.
This is just the stinky effect amplified by being a VERY LARGE outer ring. It’s much lesser with other yoyos and would be on the BiND, but it’s a good example because of that.
I KNOW I’ve seen this discussed on various yoyo forums before but Brass isn’t that common. It’s why YoyoJam used to coat them.
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I am mystified that anyone is actually debating this.
Jeff, I know there are a lot of stinky dudes at tech conferences but did prolonged exposure to tech bros totally kill your sense of smell?
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That’s fair – I guess I wasn’t considering the very rare cases of yo-yos that have enormous brass rings that regularly come into contact with your hands. I mean I probably own a thousand yo-yos at this point and I actually do have that super V shaped Sturm Panzer, so technically I have one of these.
That’s one … of a thousand. Tell me again how this is a huge pressing industry problem, Le Stinky du Brass?
Well that’s kind of a jerk thing to say to someone, Steve. Is that who you are? Is that where we’re going here? If so then I want off this train – and I guess I should be picking better hobbies.
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It’s not a pressing industry problem… but when designing the yoyo it was probably the “problem” that caused the capped ring idea “solution”.
“Let’s use brass rings to mess with density”
“Brass kinda stinks.”
“Oh yeah it does.”
“We could cap it”
BiND
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Ask @AndreBoulay
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If they wanted to do something that was actually interesting, they’d have used tungsten.
That said I do agree an Alu sandwich over brass is cool and different, and I like cool and different! But to say “this fixes that horrible smell problem” is… er… lies marketing.
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Another layer of weirdness to this:
I say copper is way more “smelly” (though it’s actually your hands you are smelling):
And there are copper coated yo-yos to be had, which are definitely gonna be something you can smell because, well, it’s all over the whole thing and all over your hands all the time.
Now with that in mind… has anyone ever said, “let’s cover that copper with aluminum because peeee-yooo it’s smelly!” 
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i feel like there are side reasons
- yyf tryna come up with a cool new concept
- maybe cheaper?!?
- nate just being classy
- if brass was all on the rim the yoyo might be too heavy (its already 67g)
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It is cool for sure I am only objecting to the “we protected you from TEH STINKAAAAY” marketing aspect of it. If they had said, yep, you know what this is 100% an aesthetics thing, that’d be completely fine by me.
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Bimetal styling shutter 2.0
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Ok - I can confirm that brass does smell if you let it tarnish (especially in humidity/sweat). Not horribly - its subtle… but regardless brass gets very dark brown (almost black) in color and doesn’t look pretty. YoYoJam used to use brass a lot on different yo-yos for weight rings (as @yoyodoc already pointed out here) - his original yo-yo the mini-motrix was brass weight rings and it was my favorite throw for years - and the rings would be nearly black after playing with it for a week in the summer. They started nickel plating all of the brass so that it wouldn’t tarnish.
With that said brass does shine up really well with metal polish (Nevr-Dull works wonders!) But I remember when using that to clean the brass there was a smell to it after too. So in general I think YoYoFactory was looking initially for a way to avoid nickel plating and not have a brass ring that looks dull (since the process of nickel plating can be tricky on yo-yos given their tolerance for perfect spin).
By using an aluminum ring to cover the brass it really did surprise me when I first tried it as I would have never expected how POWERFUL it is given its shape (and again without me knowing it was brass under the ring so assuming it was just steel or something else).
So I think it was a combination of things - the initial reflex to cover the brass for smell/tarnish or whatever led them to try and find an innovative and more visually engaging way to do that.
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