I’ve been throwing yoyos for a little more than 3 years, I know how to troubleshoot/ fine tune them, but I cannot for the life of me understand why my Quail is playing tug responsive.
String thickness is not an issue, because the outer race of the bearing is dragging when slack is introduced.
I’ve cleaned the A size bearing in acetone multiple times, and it still plays responsive.
Why is this happening? Any thoughts?
How do the pads look? Could there be a slight protrusion on part of them?
Mine is set up responsive but only because I lubed the bearing too much.
For me, they come with too much silicone. I needed to resilicone mine with a recess
I once had a pad come unstuck around about a third of its perimeter, it would appear to be fine when I inspected it, but once I threw it it would come out of its groove. I didn’t figure this out until I decided to change the pads because nothing else worked.
Do you have another size A bearing to swap out? That would be my first move.
Mine is unresponsive, but it does have some vibe, which on a bad throw it will lead to the yo-yo grabbing the string a little. Not sure if that’s part of your issue at all.
I also second the overfilled silicone comment. It took me a long time to break in mine and since I have re-done the silicone a little recessed.
Only from my alley cat, which is currently packed full of grease. It is also a flat bearing, so I’m not sure how much that would affect the response. I say that because my Cabal played very snaggy with a flat bearing, and immediately chilled out when I put a concave in it.
My Quail also has quite a bit of vibe, and I considered this as a potential factor.
I think I will remove the pads and replace them with silicone. Even if it doesn’t fix the bearing issue, it sounds like it would slightly improve its feel.
If it does end up being the bearing, does yoyoexpert currently stock concave A's?
I’ve got a couple of these in A, very good if a bit expensive.
These are a couple bucks less, I don’t like them quite as much, but they are fine.
I use a dif-e-yo konkave and monkey snot in my Quail. Its the best combination I’ve found for the quail.
Thank you 
Maybe try flowable silicone with a bit of a recess indentation to reduce some of the friction.
Ditto, Except I like the KonKave quite a bit more over the Center Trac.
So, I removed the original pads and replaced them with clear RTV - twice.
The first time, I scraped the channels with a flat surface registered against both outer edges. This is my normal method for flowable pads, but it’s still made the quail play semi responsive and snaggy.
So it dug those are out, and decided to pour some fresh ones, only this time I used the corner of my debit card to scrape the channels. This appears to have fixed the problem, for now. We’ll see.
The pads have a nice recess to them now, and they are nice and snappy when I want them to be. I’ll keep this thread updated to inform if this actually fixes the problem long-term.
Why does your bearing post look like that? The anodizing is gone…
Also, do you have any Cloud String?
My Quail wasn’t responsive, but it was a bit aggressive and snaggy for my tastes. Cloud Strings had fallen out of favor with me, because I had a hard time getting Laceration type binds to catch with them. For me however, they are the perfect match for the Quail.
I honestly have no clue… I received it this way in a trade. It doesn’t affect smoothness or play as far as I can tell. The bearing still fits snug too - not too loose, not too tight.
(Brace yourselves; string “car talk” ensuing)
I absolutely could not acquire a feel for cloud string (too springy); just not my cup of tea.
But I have used thinner poly with the Quail - which definitely gave a more favorable performance.
After quickly discovering that thick strings were not practical with the Quail, I used a white ZipLine Paul Harness Rhapsody I had in my collection of random strings; which worked great!
After that one wore out - I spun up some of my “normal” thickness poly strings, but I reduced them more than normal which resulted in a denser, tighter, and thinner string. I’ve been fairly pleased with the performance of this recipe paired with the Quail so far. But…
I’d like to try reducing the number of wraps in my base recipe by 0.5 - 1.0 and maintain my standard reduction percentage to see if it will yield a satisfactory result. 
Man, if you still have a Cloud String laying around you should definitely try it on the Quail!
I don’t 
But I do have some nylon thread in my hoard of spools. I could spin one up for research purposes!
I also run my quail with aggressively recessed monkey snot. Monkey snot doesn’t seem quite as aggressive as flowable, red rtv seems even smoother still but not enough to be worth the trouble. String wise I’ve found Markmont night moves, cirrus foam and draken to behave best. Airetic slims work well also, but I prefer the stiffer coarser feel of the Markmonts. Changing the flat bearing out for a Dif-e-yo konkave fixed the last bit of snags, the center trac bearings don’t work as well for that. I still have to throw straight and mind the plane, but no more response roulette.
I had to tweak on my quail quite a lot, but it really rewards the trouble.
Agreed! I knew it was only a matter of time before I’d land on the most optimized set-up. I just love how this thing plays now.
Do you think a C sized bearing quail would change the way it plays much?
What’s the gap width on the Quail, anyone know?
I have not been able to put this thing down since I got it properly tuned. This thing fits my style so well, and it has been my daily carry for almost 2 months now.
