Are flat bearings good? I’ve been using center-track bearings ever since I started unresponsive yo-yoing.
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They’re my favorite.
OD 10-ball is (in my opinion) the smoothest bearing out there. Every center track i have adds some amount of vibe when ran dry, thats why i test smoothness with a 10-ball.
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Flat bearings allow the string to have some more room in the gap, this can be beneficial for certain elements like Suicides, Lacerations and multiple string wraps. The benefit of Center Tracks are they help keep the string off the response pads with sloppy play and aid in Horizontal play.
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Yes. But to be honest i cant tell what center tracs and concaves do as opposed to flats. Feel wise theyre identical to me. Whatever bearing makes your yoyo smooth, use that.
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Many beginning players have experienced the pronounced precession that comes with using flat bearings. It almost ruined my experience with the first two One Drops that I bought. Once I put grooved concave bearings in, they utterly transformed and became my favorite yoyos.
One Drop’s 10-ball flat bearings are exceptional in quality and performance. However, they aren’t necessarily the best choice for everyone.
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To me, as a long time bass player, going from centering bearings to flats is like switching from playing a fretted to a fretless bass.
Playing with frets (centering) will keep you in tune and is overall easier to play without thinking about your finger placement too much. It sounds and plays how you would expect.
When you first switch to fretless (flat), you’ll have to pay more attention to your finger placement on the fret board in order to just stay in tune and will find it difficult to make it sound right. However, with practice, you will eventually find that you start to naturally play in tune with it. As you master it, you’ll realize your instrument’s ability to truly sing is far beyond the capabilities of it’s fretted counterpart and you embrace your new found freedom.
Yea, I like flat bearings.
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Good or bad is up to your preference imo.
Taken from a Markmont post.
Responsive to semi-responsive setup on flat bearing will give you the most distinct diff from one throw to the next. Concave and centering bearings lend themselves to normalizing the play style of literally any throw. They stabilize/center the throws weight distribution so you aren’t feeling as much of the throws actual characteristics.
Markmont is the type of player that likes a challenge, he prefers that everyone start on responsive and that they play on flats to get a better feel for the throw. Your ideology of throwing may not align with his, maybe you just want a perfect throw that never tilts which is 100% okay. This is why I think it’s preference based because everyone has different mindsets, goals, and preferences about throwing.
I like putting flats in anything organic/high walled. Center/KK’s go on competition/low walled yoyos because I don’t feel as drastic of a difference.
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My favorite is concave (similar to center trac but smoothly curved instead of faceted).
I don’t like flat bearings, they show up my poor throws when all I want to do is work on string tricks. 
Ivan
This is basically how I’ve been doing it. Flats for jamming, centering for performance.
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I’ll also add that flat bearings will typically tilt/spin the yoyo much easier than a centering bearing. In a way this is a positive or a negative depending on the players preferences.
I’d recommend trying both! Lots of the fun of this hobby is the personalization, feel it for yourself and decide because you cant go wrong either way.
Yes, this is what is meant by “pronounced precession” (in my earlier post). Precession is the tendency of the yoyo to turn left or right while just spinning at the end of the string with no other motion happening. When precession occurs while the yoyo is moving through a trick it can make it difficult to do things like catch it accurately on the string, or slip through a tech formation of strings, or maintain the plane during horizontal play, etc.
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Not good or bad. They just are….
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Minimal difference. What matters more is quality.
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Hey! Fellow bass player, i can agree with this. Any bassist that plays clean, has good technique can hop on a fretless no problem
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I remember when flat bearings were the norm and the only centering bearing was the koncave. I remember struggling much more to have a consistent play from my YYJ Legacy II. Since I got back in all my new throws have come with a center track and didn’t think much of it. That was until I got my Terrarian. The string rubbing on the sides can still happen, but feels much less consequential with such a good throw and my technique is also much better than back then. None of my centering bearing are as smooth as that OD 10 ball
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For me, I don’t really bother. I’ll play with whatever bearing that comes stock with the yoyo unless the bearing locks up or something. My Aitch still has it’s flat bearing on and I find it to be very stable. I can do some horizontal on it no problemo.
If you want more opinions, look to this thread:
Maybe we can summon @codinghorror as well.
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They’re neither good nor bad. Bearing come in various styles and they all work to one degree or another. Some people say flat bearings give more precise feel, others like center tracks or concave. It’s all personal preference.
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honestly a lot less of a difference in play then people will tell you or you might believe… i personally like them and stock all my throws with a specific flat bearing, but center track and concaves have never felt different for me
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I think it depends on the yoyo and the experience level of the thrower. When I first picked them up, the difference between a flat bearing and a grooved concave bearing in my VTWO and Top Deck was night and day as far as I was concerned. The fact that you have never witnessed the degree of difference that I have does not invalidate my experience, nor does it make it any less impactful to me. And it doesn’t mean that nobody else will have the same sort of experience that I did. In fact, a number of folks here have reported the exact same experience that I have, so I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss this. I don’t claim that it always will make a big difference, only that it very well might, and that it is worth trying a bearing swap if one is encountering frustrating amounts of precession.
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