That’s literally the exact opposite of what we’ve said, ha ha. Sorry for the confusion!
This is meant to be an upgrade bearing. We might put them in a special edition or something, but there are currently no plans for this to become our “default” bearing.
Thats what i get for reading sleep deprived… MY BAD!! :-X
It’s an Iyoyo Ti-ger🤓
Just tried it on my Bonfire, and it’s really nice. Super smooth and very quiet, similar to a KK. It might be my next go to bearings. Very impressed.
This sounds a bit odd to me. You spend time developing a bearing with the CLYW name to it, and it isn’t used in your own yoyos. I don’t understand. ‘Upgrade’ bearing?.. Are you suggesting the ones in your yoyos aren’t quite up to the quality you desire?
I’m not meaning this as a stab at you at all, I think I’m just having difficulty seeing the rationale behind it.
The rationale behind it is that we don’t want to raise the price of all of our return tops across the board to accommodate a much more expensive bearing. If we can eventually get the price down on the Pixel Bearings, sure, we’d love to make them our new default. But considering how much every single conversation about CLYW immediately turns to pricing (and I seem to recall more than a few comments from you complaining about our prices on this forum), we’re not looking for an increase that we’ll have to spend the next year defending.
No, but it sure appears that you are. That’s not very nice. :
I wasn’t trying to suggest that I think the bearings in your products are bad quality at all. I dont think that is the case.
I was just trying to reason through how you called it an upgrade. The mention of it seems like you’re suggesting that to buy this bearing and put it into a CLYW yoyo would make it perform better than what is already in there.
I also want to add that I mentioned nothing about pricing at all here, nor did I infer anything about it.
Got mine today. Its pretty much prefect. Not quite as steep a slope as a Konkave, factory lube is indeed awesome when broken in. Glad i left it. Ill be sure to pick up 4 or 5 more in the very near futre, once they are more available. Great Job CL!
Calling it an upgrade bearing makes sense to me. YYF yo-yos play great with a stock CT, but if you want to spend the extra money and upgrade they offer the option of a CTX or Gold CT. People like to tinker and have different options. It’s all personal preference.
You can always put nicer components in something than what come stock in that product. With guitars you’ll find lots of people who replace their pickups or tuning pegs or bridges. This doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a perfectly fine guitar before, it just means that someone wanted it to have more upscale components that what it shipped with. Or they prefer humbuckers to single coil pickups. Or they want a locking bridge. Or Steve Vai used something like it in 1987 and they are nerds.
People do it with guitars, cars, golf clubs, computers, mobile phones, yoyos, and pretty much every other consumer good that has any kind of replaceable parts.
Yoyo’s don’t have many parts, so for the most part the bearing, pads, and string are the only thing available for an upgrade. We’re already using what we think is the best string on the market, and we haven’t felt like there is any improvement to be made in our pads.
But bearings are a massively divisive component of yoyos, and every single player has their own myriad of opinions on what they like, what is the best, what works best in what yoyos, etc etc etc. So we are shipping our return tops with a pretty good bearing that seems to appeal to the widest range of people, and we’ve collaborated with iYoYo to create a more premium bearing for people who are into that sort of thing.
Yes, we could start using this as our stock bearing in all of our products. It would also end up adding $10-$15 to the retail price, and no one wants that at all.
So, it’s an upgrade bearing.
Maybe I am different than others. I buy CL knowing its a Premium. I happily pay Premium Prices for Premium Products.
I think of CL as something like Harley Davidson, or something like Ferrari. The parts, pieces, look, feel and performance is indicative of the brand and experience. They are anything but cheap.
People that fuss about the price of things like that do not understand the concept and application of “premium.” I am literally HAPPY to pay your prices cause your products are legit. Haters gonna hate, but my allegiance is pretty set. CL is my flavor of choice, every day all day.
For the record i would happily pay 10 or 15 more for that new boss bearing included.
Yes, I see what you’re saying, Steve.
I think I just perceive bearings a little generically. Like whatever it comes with is does the trick. But I know others really like specific bearings for performance and even audio reasons.
Yes, you are different than others. For every one fan like you, I get 20+ emails a week asking why our return tops are so expensive, asking why other companies sell “the same thing” for less money, asking why we don’t sell X for the same price as this other company’s Y, telling us that they can only afford our products used on the BST, begging us for free products, asking for free shipping to “get the price down”, I’ve even had people ask if they could get the return top cheaper if we sold it to them unassembled, untested, without any packaging.
It’s hard to run a premium brand in an industry where people complain about paying $50 to compete in a contest, then walk on stage with $1500 worth of equipment. There is a huge disparity between what people ask for and what they are willing to purchase. We are trying to actively grow as a company while still keeping our die-hard collectors happy and also making room for all the players who bombard us on the daily for less-expensive options. We have a team to support, we have kids to feed, we have to make X amount of money to keep the whole machine going, and we’re doing it in an industry where companies are actively punished for their success by the same people who helped them succeed in the first place.
It’s weird here. But we love what we do, and we’re fans too, so we’re just going to keep making what we, as fans, would want from our favorite brand and hope like hell that everyone is on board.
I am also a bit older (33) and have been into so very expensive hobbies in the past. Long Range RC FPV for instance where each ship I built cost anywhere from 700 to nearly 3000 each. Took many months if not closer to a year (EACH) and took major sacrifices to make happen. So the costs involved, in comparison with yoyos, is a joke.
That hobby ruined me to what is expensive or not. I only looked at what Item I needed and gauged its appropriateness to my build, not at cost. I never cared if I could get a crappier product for 5 bucks less somewhere else.
I also work at a RC Hobby / Toy shop and have been there many years now. We hear it on the daily. “Well I can get this cheaper on amazon or ebay” but they will sit there and pick my brain for an hour before they buy it offline. A-holes, for real. If you are “that guy”, your an A hole too! Stay home and shop online if its so important to you, there are shops (like the one I work at, and the one CL runs) that do a darn good job at what we do. We dont need ask-holes using us for nothing. I always say when people pull that ■■■■ line “i can get it cheaper online” i always fire back, OK, but I am answering all your questions and letting you touch the product. Amazon/ebay doesnt do that, so please be considerate and take this into consideration to see if that 5 bucks extra might be worth it to you.
Customer support and Quality control is what is important.
If something is marketed well and has lots of ads and commercials, bet your butt its crap! (im looking at you DJI!) All that money wasted on ad space was NOT used in proper Research and Development and while more people know about said brand, its a myth that they are the “best.” Like huffy makes the best bmx bikes, dji makes the best drones, and Mcdonalds has the best burgers. We ALL know thats a lie, but widely beleived by the massivly ignorant that lives on their TVs or smartphones 24/7 eating up the ads and buying into the deception.
THIS IS WHERE CHEAP CRAP GETS HIT.
Its the high cost of a low price. This is also where customer dis-stasifaction goes through the roof. Toy grade rc is plauged by this problem, everyone is so convinced that their toys are “nice” and need to be fixed and I have to break the news they got duped and get to throw it in the trash… those mall kiosk bastards will lie to yuor face to make that sale. DONT BUY THEM!
I imagine that most of your bombardments are coming from kids and whiney teens who do not have disposable income. Kids that likely have never had real job and still think the world needs to cater to them. And the others? F em! Let them play with magicyoys. We know what we got. We keep our heads above the waves. We have support where it counts. Quality not Quantity. Thats what matters. Working adults that have a problem with your products should leave you be and simply shop elsewhere, or find a cheaper hobby, cause I tell you right now. YOYOS ARE DIRT CHEAP compared to most other hobbies.
My message to the CL Haters: “Check yourself before you wreck yourself. You seem to have lost valuable perspective.”
id rather have 4 quarters than a hundred pennies.
MUCH LOVE STEVE, CHRIS, and the whole of CL family!
Back to topic the Pixel bearings is BEAST. Absolutely knocked DS off the throne of my favorite. Good work yet again!!!
just purchased a pixel bearing last night, looking forward to it.
If you want it to break it in properly (as recommended), expect a decently long break in time with that factory lube, but SO smooth when done! It really is worth the wait.
Just curious?
What length of time(approximately) is a ‘decently long’ break in period?
You’re going to love it!
mere couple of days it seems.
How much did yours cost? Just wondering. Because I bought mine for just 12$ That’s pretty cheap compared to a KK bearing.
