I have a 10-Ball, SPEC, Center Trac, Konkave Ceramic, Crucial Grooved, and YYJ Speed. Honestly, I’ve been playing and swapping bearings a lot lately. I find it VERY DIFFICULT to believe that each bearings play minimally different, and that I should just play with the one it comes with and leave it at that.
I find that concave’d bearings spin much longer than non-concave’d bearings when doing tricks, no matter how hard you throw a sleeper with 10-ball or SPEC. With a non concave’d, I can throw a yoyo and start doing tricks, it’ll spin only half the time of if I were to use a concave’d bearing - Here’s why; With a 10-ball bearing, I can only do about 3 different trick variations/combinations before the yoyo spins out before even attempting a bind. With a Center Trac bearing, I can do 4-5 different trick variations/combinations and still bind it onto my hand.
The Center Trac is rated my top pick for any bearing out there. This is just my thoughts after experimenting and playing a lot.
I find that flat bearings bind a little snappier but don’t spin as long due to string rub. I think flat bearings really help you clean up your style though, making you smoother and less sloppy.
And I feel that certain bearings go well with certain yoyos. Clyw’s should have CT, Yoyorecreation and TP should have KK, General Yo and OD should have Flats. It all depends.
I found the same thing with One Drop’s. I tried several KonKave and concave bearings, 8 ball and 10 ball. I couldn’t get them smooth no matter how i adjusted the SE’s. As soon as i put a flat 10 ball in i could get it smooth. Tried YYF and OD 10 ball both smooth. Tried it on a Dang and Summit.
I know tonnes of people who prefer to keep the original high-quality OD 10-balls in their OD yoyos.
Me, I still throw KKs in there. I don’t notice a difference in smoothness of play, but certainly the OD are inherently “smooth” bearings when lightly lubed.
I can concur that the Flats Bind much better, especially on a Sky Bind. The Flats will hit it every time even after a long string trick. The KK’s probably won’t ever Bind like the Flats but I guess the +/- is potential longer spins and string centering. I don’t know, there is just so many bearings today and the Golden Plated Bearings have no comparison to any of the others. I’m pretty sure for certain that the Golden Center Trac is the best YYE has to offer. I really do wanna try the 10 Ball OD, the Terrapins, the YYR DS and a few others. I wish I had enough money to just buy them all. ;D
Big fan of the delta cut on terrapin x bearings, but the wing cut is also pretty nifty, it’s mostly flat, giving you the good binds and usable gap space of a flat, but kinda keeps the string centered if you play well.
Crucial groove is also pretty cool, but I have yet to try a CTX.
I generally find I like string centering shapes though, keeps me from killing the spin too quickly thanks to my newby skill level
I can’t say that a centering bearing really does extend spin time or not but I can say for sure that a centering bearing will change how the yoyo responds in a bind. I have a hard time dealing with yoyos that bind very easily, I would rather have to ensure a bind than get one by accident. So I put a konkave or other centering bearing in, lately billybobs because they are cheap and pretty good, and it works for me.
I tested 4 different bearings, the flat 8 ball, center track, the crucial groove v2 and the famous dife yo konkave. The Konkave gave me the longest spin times, second best was the groove, third as the center track and last was the flat. Despite the results I personally like the center track the best out of those four and my favorite bearing at the moment is the ctx. Center tracks I find will give a little string rub at slow spins but give tighter binds like the flat.
I prefer working bearings. For most, not all, I think there is a great placebo effect with certain bearings just like I know that my yoyos each work best with a certain colored string while I play certain types of music, on days of the week with certain letters, while reciting poetry in reverse phonetics. It also helps if I wear my special yoyo socks. Just kidding, lol. I’m glad you like what you like. You’re yo-yoing and that’s what’s important.
For me, if the bearing works, it works. I doubt I could even tell what bearing was in a yoyo without looking.
Except for precession, I’d be hard pressed to tell, either. I don’t have a powerful throw, so the gyroscopic effect doesn’t negate the precession for me as much as it might for some people. I do notice when using flats. I don’t really notice much performance difference between most profiled bearings.
I prefer concave-profiled bearings, but ultimately I feel that it’s a bit of placebo effect at work on me, too. I can admit it.
When learning new tricks I do prefer to use a string-centering bearing (CT, KK, 10-ball, 8-ball, doesn’t matter) but when doing tricks that I’m already familiar with, the bearings, as long as it spins freely, doesn’t really affect me. Sky binds are definitely more consistent with the flat bearings though.
The only exception for me is when it comes to horizontal tricks. The string-centering bearings certainly do help with spin-time and stability, making horizontal tricks more consistent to pull off. For me anyway. I’m not very good though.
Marcius, sky binds are one of the most “adjustable” tricks in the book, though. A bit more momentum or hitting the string with a slightly larger loop… hard to miss a sky bind! Probably my most-used bind along with the Guy Wright bind, and the one I often go to when my spin is dying and binding will be hard.
I threw the yoyo with each different bearing five times each and found the average spin time for each bearing. I did the test on three totally different yoyos (clyw wooly marmot v1, clyw glacier xp, and the shutter) to verify that it wasn’t just the yoyo giving the spin times and that it really was the bearing. I am sure that each throw was close to the next but not exact.
I don’t notice a difference in smoothness of play, but certainly the OD are inherently “smooth” bearings when lightly lubed.