If you want my opinions on the response and I guess to give Glen some feedback from another person.
I like it, but it’s definitely not better. It’s just very different. A short summary would be to say that I think the new response system handles stall play extremely well, but it feels like a big downgrade for doing string tricks. Which might defeat the point just a bit since I think opening up the gap a bit more for string tricks was part of the design concept.
A longer summary would be that I think it responds great. Zero complaints on that front. Glen said the yoyo initially resisted an engineer wind from him. But in my experience I just popped on a brand new normal thickness Kitty string, cranked the tension a bit, and then just snap wound it and started playing. After a bit I loosed the tension back to normal and it’s still responding perfectly. So zero complaints from me there. With drilled hole response, how you get that kind of biting feeling during the response. There’s none of that here. The returns feel butter smooth, and there’s less speed variance during the return. On my other metal axle spinworthies, how the yoyo initially starts returning at a comfortable speed and then gets faster before hitting your hand. The returns on this yoyo feel like the entire return happens at a consistent speed. The caveat here is that there have been a couple times that the yoyo felt like it lost a bit of it’s power returning and kind of “died” into the stall. Just throwing and regenning with a bit more force and intent stopped that from happening.
The bad aspects though are that I think the new response really struggles to handle extra string layers. My string trick repertoire on fixies isn’t the best, but hitting Roller Coaster and Split the Atom on this is a struggle. The yoyo feels like it wants to snag and respond on the string much more easily when you’re in a mount. I’m wondering if this is because the extra string layer wants to get pushed into the response gap.
So yeah I really like my yoyo with the new response. I think it plays amazingly smooth for stalls and loops, but string tricks are a massive struggle on it. I mostly throw stall based tricks anyway, so not being as good for string tricks doesn’t bother me. I’ve also been messing with a bunch of fixie GT variations lately, and the extra wide gap on this is a blessing for getting knots out.
I’m curious to hear what Kyle and other people have to say about it too though.