Monkeyfinger Design Tri-B (A5 7075 Alloy Variant): A High Speed YoYo Review

Monkeyfinger Design (also know as MFD) has released its latest effort, the Tri-B (pronounced tribe). The tri referring to the fact that this yo-yo is a combination of the Caesar, Ape-X, and Gelada 2. Before I get into the specifics on the play of the yo-yo I want to touch on a new service that MFD offers, custom anodizing. Usually I do not go over the anodizing much in the reviews because it is so subjective and adds absolutely nothing to the performance of the yo-yo, but in this case I wanted to point it out. Monkeyfinger gives the end user carte blanche to go nuts with the ano job on their yo-yos with the biggest limitation being how much the player wants to spend. This is all done in house and many options are offered in order to get that “perfect” look. When I decided to do this review I also decided to give their new service a shot. Now I will say right off the bat that I cheated, I didn’t go through the easy to use form on Monkeyfinger’s webpage. I am big on giving artists the chance to show off, so I contacted the company directly. They were extremely polite and basically asked me what I had in mind. I am a colossal computer geek, and being such, love the movie Tron. So all I did was send them a picture showing off the lightcycles from the second movie and told them two things: go nuts and surprise me… which they did and then some. They custom masked circuit patterns in the catch zone, acid washed the cups with ghosted circuit board pattern inside each cup, and ghosted “HIGHSPEED YOYO” on the blue rim. Ghosting, for those that may not have seen it in person, is when a manufacturer lays down a custom mask before bead blasting the surface. The result being that anything under the mask retains the polished finish, leaving a shiny pattern on the surface of the yo-yo. The end results are absolutely stunning and turn it into a true work of art. Does any of this add to the play of the yo-yo? Not one bit, but it helped create a much more intimate attachment between yo-yo and me because I knew there is not another one like it and it is something I had a hand in creating. I highly recommend using this service if you have the means to do so, and I cannot stress enough that you just give them some loose guidelines and let them go nuts… they are true anodizing artists. Now with that out of the way it is time to turn to the yo-yo itself and see if it lives up to its looks.

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