My bad, this was poorly worded on my part. It’s because the Hatrick is too high wall. For competitive nature, you want the yoyo that gives you the best advantage to win, you don’t want anything to hold you back. The Hatrick wasn’t designed to be competitive in nature, rather its more so giving power to an old school design so that you can enjoy the best of both worlds. High wall with impressive stability and spin time if you play clean.
I have seen Justin do Horizontal with yoyos I imagine most people could not do zontal on, so basically anything in his hands looks great. But when it comes to competing, a miss here, or a mistake there can cost you the competition. Competing with a Hatrick or any high walled organic in a competitve setting like Worlds or Nationals, etc would be the equivilant to trying to race the LeMans in a Kia. You’re not gonna start out the gate gimped.
I could see the mindset years ago, a lot of pros were still competing with monometals, and generally speaking, they were expensive to produce and we didn’t have the right fitment or weight distribution for the first few years imo. But it’s 2023, we’re all sold on bimetals, it’s a done deal, here to stay and I would urge that you join all of us in the land of bimetal glory.
Reseating a bimetal rim is relatively easy to me now. It’s just a simple part of yoyo maintenance if you do ding the yoyo. I also enjoy steel rims on my yoyos because they’re more durable to dings. 6061 can gash on a concrete hit and you have to sand it down so it’s not so sharp. I’ve reset my rims for a lot of my bimetals countless times without a tool - just my foot, or a hammer - and I go back to jamming.
That all being said, I believe that using bi-metals as a tool to improve your throwing is invaluable to have. When you throw a bimetal and learn a new trick, you can sit in the mount longer and take your time dissecting the trick as you watch the video. Once I gave into bimetals it just simply made it more enjoyable to learn a new trick.
These days, people just have both. I’d say my collection leans more towards monometals because once I learn my trick I don’t feel like I need a bimetal to perform it anymore, just play what I think feels good.
I completely understand your sentiments here, I don’t want to force you or twist your arm. I have the fortune to play a lot of yoyos at DXL and it’s of my personal opinion that Duncan bimetals are the best “bang for your buck.” The Grasshopper 2 has absolutely no business being that good, at that low of a price. A lot of other companies would be asking $120+ at the minimum for something this good. Duncan has changed a lot over the last few years and have been making great stuff.
I would argue they have nothing in the monometal selection and would definitely say you should look elsewhere in that department. The Barracuda is probably their best, and imo, its a bit dated atm when you compare it to something like a Spotlight or Pheasant, and other competitive monometals.
But if you only have a $80-$100 budget, then the best suggestion personally would be to hop on the BST and find a few used bimetals for a good price like stated above. The Wish for $45 is a great price. That leaves left over funds to buy a second yoyo and some string. I’d get a monometal you think looks good, and a bimetal off the BST.
edit (i would definitely go for yoyospirits above over the prestige)
Welcome back, hope you have fun!