Hi everyone, I’m by no means a yoyo expert, but I like this hobby. I only started yoyoing since last October, but I’ve been practicing a lot and slowly starting to appreciate the subtle differences in different yoyos and their accessories.
Recently I’ve been trying out different kinds of strings. So far I’ve tried Kitty Fat and XL, Sochi Fat and Normal, and Markmont Cumulus Foam.
I know that a lot of people seem to prefer new, bouncy string. However, It’s quite the opposite for me. I like broken-in string. It might be crusty looking compared to new string, but it’s more consistent. From my experience, once a string is broken in, it plays consistently after that. New string tend to be bouncy, and as time goes on, it stretches in length and becomes thinner. I like consistency in my string.
One of the other things I care about in a string is bind consistency. I hate when my binds slip. I have quite a few binds up my puny arsenal of tricks, but there is this one bind that seem to be on the border of risky/safe binds.
Some binds like guy wright, hiroyuki suzuki, laceration and the regular binds are of low risk from my experience, and they pretty much bind the way I want all the time.
However, there is this one bind I do pretty much the majority of the time and despite it being reliable 90% of the time it still slips every now and then. I’ve been using that bind all the time so I’m pretty sensitive when something feels off about it. While going through different types of pads and string, I noticed something strange about string.
First of all, I doubt it’s my pads. I’ve used several different pads before, and eventually moved onto RTV. I now use Permatex Ultra Grey RTV since it’s the most durable of all the permatex RTV out there, and it is the grippiest of all the 19mm pads I’ve used so far. Also, from my experience, RTV silicone has no risk of falling out. Every single time I’ve siliconed my yoyos it has always been stuck in the groove very nice and firm.
If a bind is slippy on a new yoyo I get, I re silicone it with the RTV and its problems usually go away.
Then as I started trying out different string I noticed something strange.
I usually keep all my used string on a coat hanger and I just hang it on them by the slipknot. It helps with gauging length and sorting them by colour and type makes it easy to compare between strings.
I noticed that thickness between string become pretty much negligible after break-in. Sochi Normal, Fat, and Kitty Fat and XL seem virtually the exact same when it comes to thickness. Now, it may seem like the thickest string binds the most consistently, but it doesn’t seem like it’s quite the case either. For whatever reason, Sochi normal binds the most consistently while all of the other string slip every now and then. It’s rather surprising since it’s allegedly the thinnest out of all the string I have.
Now, new string tend to hold its characteristics well as it’s a bit more puffed up, and as a result the rated thickness of the string actually shows, but once the string are broken in, I think they all play similar to each other (except sochi normal for some reason, which seems like the most consistently binding string I have tried so far)
It’s somewhat disappointing, since I wanted to try out whipper strings since I’m learning more and more slack and whip tricks, and from what I read, thicker strings carry its momentum better than thinner string because they’re heavier, but it’s weird that the thicker string variants I own seem to slip a bit more than my sochi normal.
I’d love any discussion regarding this, since I like detailed discussion regarding accessories. I really enjoy the subtle differences in all the different parts in a yoyo. Do you guys like playing with new string or broken-in string? What do you think about bind consistency? Do you guys do certain binds that tend to work 100% of the time on a certain string while slipping on others? Have you guys notice any slippage on thicker string compared to thinner string?
