Understood. Actually, I didn’t mean 2-3 minutes of non-stop combos. I meant 2-3 minutes simply sleeping at the end of the string (measuring maximum spin time).
@andy569 showed me 25 seconds of combo work with a single throw of a lubed stock First Base, which tells me that my inability to get more than 5-10 seconds of combo time with any of my responsives (which includes a First Base) has as much to do with my rotten beginner’s technique as anything else.
However, @FiveIronBrian mentioned the need for spacers in an SFX to give it decent spin time in responsive mode. I will look into that.
Yeah, I see that. Hopefully a set of thin gray shims will do the trick. I mean, I still want it to be responsive, I’d just like some decent spin time out of it too.
I just love that players WANT to throw responsive enough to want to overcome their natural limitations again. One of the reasons stall-based play developed was by embracing the aspects of responsive play which we had fought against for years. But it’s still super fun to throw longer combos on them too. And it’s worth remembering that all of the mid-school classic tricks by guys like Spencer, Escolar, Citadel, Jason Lee, Sage, etc were developed on responsive. Not because they’re better tools but that was just what was available.
I don’t pretend that it’s for everybody, but if you give yourself a solid month and ONLY throw a responsive bearing yoyo like a FH or Renegade, you will develop the unconscious habits which help eke out every second of spin. But that’s a hard row to hoe, and no one else can tell you it’s worth it when there are a million awesome metals out there which won’t make you work so hard.
I am working my way through the Intermediate section of the YYE learning ladder with a responsive yoyo. I think it is only natural to watch Andre’s tutorial videos and think, gee I’d like to get the kind of spin times he does out of his Dark Magic responsive yoyo. As far as I know there are no videos where he explains how he tuned it to make it behave the way you see in those videos, and that just leads to the natural assumption, however naive, that any decent responsive yoyo should be capable of playing that way.
As for combos, it isn’t that I want to overcome some inherent limitation in responsive yoyos, I just want to do a little more than a single trick before I have to return the yoyo to my hand, and given what I’ve seen (e.g., 25-second combo routines with a stock First Base) I feel that should be doable. Eventually I will “graduate” to unresponsive play and this will all become a non-issue. But for now, I’m looking for hints on how to eek out as much combo time as I can from my responsive yoyos.
You have to realize that these guys you’re watching spent years, if not decades, playing with responsive yo-yos. Back then, for me at least, you’d pretty much play with the same yoyo and that’s it. Because there wasn’t anything else. I don’t remember “collections” being a big thing back then and you might just have a few yo-yos. But you’d be intimately familiar with all of them. You’ve got to have an incredible connection to your yoyo to pull off some of the stuff you’re probably looking at. Lots of people still play responsive but that era is gone for the most part. It sounds to me like you’re trying to shove 10+ years worth of responsive yoyoing into a few months. Not trying to burst your bubble but if you’re just looking to master responsive play in a few months and then move on to unresponsive, it probably won’t happen.
I see Andre fire off a breakaway, land a trapeze and then talk while the yoyo spins on the string. There’s no way a beginner would look at that and think, gee, that kind of spin time must only come from 10+ years worth of experience with responsive play. We don’t set out to cram a decade of experience into a few weeks, we just watch the videos and come to the natural assumption that, with enough practice, we should be able to do whatever we see being demonstrated. I don’t think there’s any way a beginner would ever come to “realize” that it takes 10+ years of practice to get good spin time out of a responsive yoyo.
I think you misread my tone as derogatory or condescending, and even though that’s completely not how I meant it, I can see how it could be taken that way after re-reading it. It could have been phrased differently
Part of the problem, I think, comes from the fact that the demonstrators in these video tutorials make everything look so easy, and they rarely point out what a beginner is or isn’t going to encounter aside from the really common problems and pitfalls. And why would they? Why would it even occur to an expert to talk about spin time in a tutorial about landing a basic side mount?
And that’s one reason I come to these forums. To ferret out details not directly addressed in the videos, but which nevertheless emerge naturally, at least to my mind, from simply watching them and comparing the results I get to what I’m seeing on the screen.
That precise issue with the learning curve (especially w responsive yo-yos) is exactly what has historically made it so hard to teach/develop/retain solid players. It’s similar to some martial arts, wherein 1 student in 1000 might actually succeed in making it to 1st dan, 1/10000 to 2nd dan, etc. And in yo-yo you’re absolutely right that experts FORGET much of what they struggled with as beginners and beginners can’t perceive the effort that goes into making it look easy.
I feel like I am making strong throws, but maybe I’m still not throwing strong enough. Of course, an unresponsive yoyo does spin a pretty long time with (what passes for) my strong throws, but I am interested in getting the kinds of spin time you get with your Dark Magic in responsive mode. Or maybe it is more accurate to call your setup (in the intermediate videos) “semi-responsive”?
A separate issue I run into is that I often have trouble getting a strong throw to yield good spin with some of my unresponsive plastic yoyos. There is so much friction with the string as it unwinds on the way down that the yoyo loses most of its velocity before it reaches the end of the string (and then there’s the fact that my Wedge vibrates like crazy for some reason).
Actually. Friction on the way down is kind of what you want. The tighter wound the string is on the yo-yo the stronger the spin will be coming off. If the string is too loose, or too thin and used the YoYo will actually fall off the string with not enough spin. The response is also important for this too. If its too worn out it can yield poor spin. You can compensate by throwing harder too but it all adds up to how well the yoyo spins initially off a throw.
Throw your Wedge and catch it on a trapeze. Hold that in front of you. Move your right hand (assuming you are throwing right handed) slightly forward and then backward. This will slowly smooth the yoyo spin out to eliminate the vibe. If the yoyo still vibes after this it may be a bit unbalanced. If it smooths out fairly well then it’s just a practice thing. Learning to do this will let you very quickly adjust a slightly off throw so the yoyo is spinning true. I often do when I’m trying to learn a trick and want extra spin time for several attempts.
So what am I experiencing when I take a new (unresponsive plastic) yoyo with a fresh string, give it a strong sleeper throw, and can feel and hear the yoyo struggling to reach the bottom of its travel? And by that I mean I can see it dropping much slower than my responsive yoyos, as if something is holding it back. The downward velocity and momentum I expect to feel from the weight of the yoyo just isn’t there. Is that normal?
