I wrote up this post for my own website which can be viewed here: https://mofuble.neocities.org/blog/cerasus
Posting it here as well for the sake of convenience and assuming people don’t actually want to visit my website lol.
This is a project that I’ve been working on for a few years now, but with protos now in the wild and getting shared around at a few clubs, I figured it was time to actually talk about it.
The Cerasus started as a simple vision, simply wanting a large diameter yoyo that actually had enough extra weight to take advantage of hypothetical power gains from the diameter. All of the large diameter yoyos on the market I tried had the same few recurring problems: they didn’t have enough power, they had too much kickback, binds were too slippy, they were too wide, and they were uncomfortable to hold and catch.
Elaborating on those points, I consistently found their performance on sub 70g yoyos to be lacking despite having such a high potential from the diameter. The ones above 70g however had a high amount of kickback and felt awkward on the throw. They would unwind slowly while yanking heavily on your arm, an experience akin to trying to throw a yoyo underwater. They all have very slippy binds, leading to lots of frustration when trying to film a trick and the bind slips at the end. In addition the large diameters make snap starts awkward, so slippy binds on the low RPM of weak snap start on these large yoyos leads to a lot of frustration during restarts. They often also feel cumbersome to play in terms of navigating the yoyo through mounts. Others I’ve spoken to attribute the cumbersome play to the diameter, making the yoyo too big to easily navigate through your fingers and string formations, but in my experience, the width is the primary factor. Other big diameter yoyos like to scale the width up a lot, to give the appearance of gigantic versions of normal yoyos. However super wide width paired with super large diameter is a recipe for mounting accidental strings. With the advent of super wide yoyos at standard diameters becoming more typically accepted, I feel people are understanding that you can retain an easy to play yoyo while extending the dimensions in just a single direction. Expanding in both directions is when you start to run into playability issues. Finally, shape seemed to be an issue that almost very little consideration was ever given to. Lots of sharp edges paired with your fingers falling into the chasm of a gap in the center. If a yoyo just feels bad to hold and catch, and you’re reminded every single throw, I think that’s almost a death sentence in the 2026 landscape of having literally thousands of fantastic modern yoyos to choose from.
The Cerasus addresses all of these issues to create what I feel to be the most normal yoyo available within this dimensional realm.
The edges on the profile have an exceptionally large fillet radius to create a hand feel that will be comfortable on every catch no matter what. These were inspired by the old ILYY ultra round rims, featured on some of the most hand-comfortable yoyos ever designed. This style of fillet has also been seen on more competitive designs like the Japan Technology Mirage or the Yoyofactory Spotlight. I also wanted to have the central gap of the yoyo be narrow enough that your middle finger wouldn’t feel like it was falling into a chasm, and instead get gently nestled by the walls tapering inwards. It was a balancing act of finding how narrow this could be without creating a yoyo far more prone to tilting. With bigger diameter yoyos, you really need to consider the string break angles, because the increased diameter means the angle the string can be off-plane before touching one of these tall walls is reduced. Across three 3D printed prototypes, dialing in the string break angle to comfort of grip was one of the single biggest factors I battled with.
Having a high enough total mass to take advantage of the diameter’s power gains was another very big factor. With large diameter yoyos staying in the 6Xg weight range, a large portion of that weight is being occupied by the material in the walls just trying to expand out to the max diameter. Once they reach their max diameter, they’ve already spent so much mass in the hub and walls that there’s barely anything left to allocate at the diameter where MOI returns would be the highest. The Cerasus is not meant to be a powerhouse, it is meant to be considerably more powerful than any yoyo below 60-65mm diameter, but maximizing power is not the goal here. The Cerasus takes advantage of its large diameter for MOI gains, but instead of concentrating the weight as far out as possible, weight is concentrated within the aluminum directly below the plastic rims. Think of this as almost an inverted step rim, like what you can see on the Yoyorecreation FYFO or CLYW Borealis (two of my absolute favorite yoyos in terms of play feel). So the Cerasus was designed to take advantage of performance gains offered by the size, but consideration to play feel was also critical. Cerasus carries a lot of momentum in its movement, but doesn’t actually require much force to start moving. It has a lot of power, but plays with a soft and controlled feeling. Despite the listed weight of 75g, it feels in movement like something much lighter, while having more spin than anything most players have ever played. This actually helps with solving the next issue I’ll discuss, kickback and binds.
Even though power was scaled back quite a lot from what the Cerasus could potentially offer from this diameter and total mass combo, powerful and rim weighted yoyos inherently tend to slip on binds a lot more, and have some nasty kickback. When you throw a yoyo with way too much kickback, it can feel like it’s fighting against you to unwind, as if the throw was happening in slow motion. Maybe some people like this feeling, but it’s extremely unpleasant to me. The Cerasus currently has a 4.3mm gap, which will be further reduced to 4.1mm in an upcoming revision. These more narrow gap widths paired with broad 21mm response (Snow Tires and CLYW-sized response are compatible with this yoyo), mean that the yoyo throws and binds like something at a normal size and weight. When playing with very short 85cm and below string for 5A and 3A, binds can start to get pretty slippy, which is why the gap width is being reduced even more. So many yoyos today want to maximum gap widths for modern 1A string lengths and thickness, but this leads to yoyos that are very annoying to play with short strings used in other styles. 5A is my favorite style, and I enjoy playing 3A a lot as well, so having a gap width that was nice to use with short strings matters a lot to me. The response groove is actually slightly deeper than Snow Tires are tall, so if you pop some CLYW-sized response pads in, they’ll always sit recessed. This means that despite the narrow gap width, you’re never going to experience string drag against the response, so even with 1A string lengths of up to 120cm, you aren’t going to be fighting with this yoyo wanting to snag on you. And if you do want flush response (and I do, I’m a griphead, I love an aggressive response) you can always silicone this yoyo. It’s very easy to make a yoyo less response with recessed silicone or thinner pads, but it’s much more difficult to make a yoyo more responsive (while still being fully unresponsive) once you’re using flush response of the softest material available.
The specific dimensions of this yoyo were given a lot of consideration, as shown by the 3D printed prototypes slowly growing wider and wider. While an increase in width makes a large diameter yoyo more cumbersome to play, this 52mm width of the Cerasus I think strikes the best balance of many factors. At this width the rims are allowed to be fat enough horizontally to contain all of the mass I want, while giving you a very comfortable area to grip. Consideration needed to also be taken for the large fillet of the outside edge of the rim to the cup, I wanted to spend some extra width to make sure that would be extremely round and comfortable to catch at any angle. The central gap also needed to be wide and open enough that plane keeping wouldn’t be a challenge, and that the yoyo is avoiding unnecessary string contact even during zoning, unless you seriously lose control or intentionally drag the string into the walls. This width I think gives the best playability to comfort ratio, in the more narrow 3D printed prototypes, either the central gap was too narrow and plane keeping became a challenge during especially stressful things like behind the back/under leg/around arm tricks, or the rims were too narrow and I couldn’t fit as much mass at the diameter I wanted, or the edge filet of the rim needed to be reduced too much and grip comfort suffered. At 73x52mm the Cerasus has a large presence, but it remains just within the realm of being maneuvable through dense tech and whatever string formations you want without being a chore.
I couldn’t fit this in anywhere else, but an elephant in the room to address is the plastic rims. If I had simply wanted to do a regular stepped rim, that could’ve been done, the inverse step-rim of the plastic rim isn’t the entire picture. If you’ve played a big yoyo, one of the things you likely noticed before even the first bind was that it was loud. Yoyos at this size turn into gongs, even without 3A collisions or 5A counterweight hits in mind, just the string snapping into the gap can create loud rings that reverberate for a long time. While loud yoyos with distinct rings can be appealing in their own right, for something I want to use both at home and in public often, not bothering those around me is infinitely more important than the yoyo making a funny noise. I’m married and live with my partner who I can confidently say does not want to hear a large yoyo ringing incessently for hours straight. And when I’m waiting on the train or a bus, I do not want to be the public nusiance creating noise pollution. The plastic rims are very thick and absorb the reverberations, effectively muting the yoyo. Loud high pitched rings that drone on are replaced with a low pitched thunk that doesn’t last for more than an instant. I’ve never bothered to take large diameter yoyos out of the house before, or play them while my partner is at home. But the Cerasus does such an excellent job at dampening vibration that I can comfortably play 5A with this whenever and wherever. The plastic rims are based off the Turning Point Ensemble, a yoyo I’ve loved for years that had the same vision I’m describing. Reduce loud metal ringing to a dull plastic thump. The Ensemble has very thick rims that have absorbed countless shocks against concrete and steel grating outside while I’ve played 5A with it, and there are no cracks or signs of deterioration. Basing the rim design and proportional size on the Ensemble was a deliberate choice to make sure these rims are durable. Far too many yoyos released in the past few years with plastic rims have not taken the consideration required in regard to both fitment and rim design, and you’re starting to see many of them cracking or snapping because of this. The Cerasus is not a yoyo meant to be babied or treated kindly, these plastic rims are meant to be used for 3A and 5A for as many years as you want with no worries. The Ensemble had this figured out in 2019, and for some reason none of the plastic rim yoyos of the past 2-3 years seemingly took notes.
The Cerasus went through three separate 3D printed designs before coming up with the machined version we see now. The overal width, rim fillet radius, and width of the central trapeze area have all been primary points of adjustment between these designs. The initial design actually used 19mm pads. From the start I liked broad response a lot, but with this first design I was placing more emphasis on what I assumed the average yoyo player would prefer. However after playing this print I just don’t think 19mm OD response is quite right for yoyos of this diameter and weight. It’s simply too slippy and has more kickback than I wanted. The adjustment to 21mm OD response with no other changes to the gap was instantly a massive improvement and convinced me that broad response is the way to go for a broad yoyo. People may think they want 19mm OD pads for the sake of convenience, but using 19mm pads on this design just make the entire yoyo worse to play in every regard just for the sake of convenience. Using CLYW-sized response was my compromise, people who want to use pads still can, and I also get the grippier and taller response a yoyo of this size demands. Beyond response concerned however, the trapeze width just felt a bit too claustrophobic. Plane management was a little too demanding, it felt like angling the string around the Great Wall of China. The handfeel was excellent, but the plane management issue hampered performance too much.
From the first iteration, the response was changed to broad 21mm outer diameter. The response bump itself didn’t need to be changed, because despite the initial version using 19mm pads, it was actually designed originally for 21mm response. This is a funny backwards progression to some older yoyos like the Genesis and Severe, which started as broad pad designs, and later switched to 19mm response but didn’t lower the response walls. On a tangential note to this, I do feel like it’s important to emphasize that the original Severe and Genesis could have used 19mm response, but instead they chose to use broad response on the originals out of preference of the original players. They were only changed to 19mm in later runs out of convenience for consumers. Beyond the response change, the width was also bumped up from 46 to 48mm, this extra width was packed entirely in the trapeze width. Plane management became easier, and response got a lot better. The changes made here were winners.
Many months pass since the second revision, feedback is sourced from other players as well. Average yoyo widths have rapidly expanded and 50-52mm wide is now just accepted as a normal width, rather than being viewed as super-wide. I have small hands, but feedback from players with much bigger hands find the trapeze area of the profile to be too cramped on their middle finger still. I feel that plane management could be even more forgiving. This leads to an increase in width by 4mm, to a total of 52mm. 2mm are spent increasing the trapeze width area for easier plane management and helping people with bigger hands feeling a bit less cramped when holding the design, and 2mm are spent increasing the fillet radius of the outer rim edge even further without sacrificing any effective catch area on the yoyo. The rims were already very comfy in the past, but with a wider grip zone of the rims, I hoped this would also lead to people with larger hands being able to use a wider grip on the body of the yoyo when catching and throwing it. The expansion of width is a success, the yoyo still does not feel cumbersome to manuever through string formations, plane management is finally as low-cortisol as I want, and people with bigger hands are pleased with the increased size of the rims and less claustrophobic central gap.
Shown here are two of my favorite large diameter yoyos prior to the Cerasus. The Japan Technology Fergus and CLYW 2018 Sasquatch are two of the yoyos that made me fall in love with bigger yoyos, but both of them just have some core issues I wanted to address. First is that they’re both extremely loud to play and ring like gongs. The second is that neither of them are particularly comfortable to catch, with fairly hard edges. A problem unique to the Fergus is that I think the response suffers from being 19mm OD pads, because it’s just too loose on binds. A problem unique to the 2018 Sasquatch is that the profile shape means its extremely unforgiving in terms of plane management and tilt, it has the power to get through anything, but it inherently asks for cleaner play. Despite these quirks, these yoyos both are exceptional in their own ways, they’re the yoyos that made me firmly say “I want an ideal yoyo at this size.”
The Hydrangea Quercus (a profile previously featured on the Sfida and Laurus) has my ideal yoyo profile. Just two arcs. Nice and simple, effective and beautiful. It’s a masterpiece of profile shapes and I had no shame in adopting this for the Cerasus. I genuinely do not think I could make something better no matter how much I tried. The ILYY 2wei was also referenced in the rim fillet, you will never find a yoyo this comfortable to hold. It’s a perfect ball that your hand cradles like a glove.
The Ensemble was really only referenced in terms of the axle bump and both POM rim design and fitment. This material and design were chosen to reduce noise and ensure a rim design that would not crack or snap. The axle bump was scaled up quite a bit from what it needs to be, at least in my experience of playing with side effect yoyos, I find yoyos with increased center mass to bind more tightly and have less kickback. Since both having tight binds and wanting reduced kickback were big concerns with this design, I had the excuse I wanted to visually scale up the size of the axle bump. Visually I think it looked a bit goofy with a smaller bump, the CLYW Sasquatch also scaled up its axle bump in the cup and I think it just feels a bit more balanced visually. These use 10mm axles, despite wanting to add center weight with the bigger axle bumps, I personally felt that the increased aluminum would be enough to provide the feel I wanted, and the increase in mass from using longer axle size would be excessive.
As of writing, the Cerasus has been in testing for around 6 months now, and the only changes being made to the next revision are to reduce the gap width to 4.1mm (down from 4.3), while also increasing the depth of the response groove by 0.15mm to make sure even the thickest response pads won’t ever protrude. Yellow snow tires have been a particularly grim batch that were all too thick, so with this extra measure, it makes sure that the response pads will not protrude, and the slight recess will ensure that the Cerasus is not snaggy even with full length, thick 1A string. Bind consistency with sub 85cm string length is the primary driving factor for this change, multiple testers and I all agree that binds still need to be tightened up just a tad.
As an addendum, I’d like to explain the origin of the name. Despite living in Finland now, having moved here from Boston, the vast majority of my life was spent in Southwest Michigan. Michigan is where I’d consider my home to be, Michigan produces the most cherries of any state in the US from the tree Prunus Cerasus. Cherry festivals were one of my favorite times of the year throughout my childhood. From the blossom festivals in the spring to harvest festivals in late summer, cherry related things remind me of my home in SW Michigan. It also helps that since my youth I’ve been enamored with Japanese style cherry blossoms, which is where the pink and white color scheme comes from.
Thanks for your time reading this, I hope if you get a chance to try a Cerasus it will change your perception on yoyos of this size. The final specs are as follows.
Diameter: 73mm
Width: 52mm
Weight: 75g
Bearing: Size C
Axle: 10mm M4
Gap width 4.1mm
Response: 21mm OD broad pad (CLYW size)
Estimated release will be sometime in 2027, but for now, testing and gathering feedback continues. If you’d like to try the Cerasus out for yourself, DXL and Chicago club, and contests in the mideast of the US are your big opportunities. Alternatively bug me and I can organize another Helsinki yoyo meetup.