So on the Friday of last week, Matt (SnakeStrings guy) sent me some strings to test, and I got it on Monday, so I used the strings all week to review.
First things first, color and first impressions.
Blood Lust: I love black and red together and all, but sweet heavens this string was really dark. You couldn’t see it when you were playing. The string looked fancy though, and the colors blended really well, I loved the color combo, but it wasn’t very useful. 6.5/10
Blue and Green: Okay so I didn’t know this was blue and green, I actually thought it was yellow and black until I read the little baggy. Upon closer inspection it was blue and green, it was just VERY hard to see that it was. If it’s initial purpose was to be yellow and black, I would have loved it, but the fact it was supposed to be blue and green, it made me a bit dissapointed. 4.5/10
Solid Pink: My favorite of the three. It catches your eye, and when you’re outside it looks amazing. I love the Blue of my yoyo mixed with the Pink on the string. Really outstanding! 9.5/10
Now taking the strings out of the pack I was a bit surprised at just how thin they were. It almost felt like it was too thin to play with. I gave it a shot and I put it on my FG Ava, which is the yoyo used for this review, and it seemed extremely anemic, I also learned that it was twisted inverse, like for a left handed player, I didn’t mind but I figured he did it because he thought I was left handed. I didn’t know what to expect.
On First Throw: I didn’t know what I was to expect, but the string was pretty good, although left much to be desired. The size of it made the throw feel awkward. Now to go more in-depth
String Feel: The feeling was pretty soft. It wasn’t Kitty soft or anything, but soft enough that it was usable. It felt over tightened, and the string material itself felt pretty cheap, almost like the polyester used to make really cheap clothing. Higher quality materials would prove to help, but the stuff he used on these prototypes were actually quite swell, I just felt like it could be improved on a lot more. Other than that string burn wasn’t too much of a problem, much better than Kitty, but not nearly as good at it as YYSL Type X’s. 7.75/10
String Tension: I don’t want to say this string is absolutely awful when it comes to holding string tension, but I think the mix of how tight the string was wound added to the sheer thinness of this string, we got ourselves a bad case of spaghetti string. If you’re good with string tension, this shouldn’t be a problem, but if you’re like me and ignore string tension unless you absolutely HAVE to fix it, this string is pure torture. This seems that it could be pretty easily fixed by making the string thicker and stiffer. 3/10
String Play- This goes into a few categories…
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Slacks: Not horrible, but not great either. I was surprised that a thin string could actually open up slack that much, considering that and just how bad the tension is, pleasantly surprised. The string seemed like it wanted to stay open, but there was just a lot of room for improvement. 5/10
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Suicides: Well, you know this isn’t going to turn out well. The problem with the tension that I had, really made suicides REALLY hard. I mean I got down a few, but more often than not, if I missed, it’d end up in a knot, or in an awkward formation. It wasn’t abysmal, but sweet heavens I wanted so much more out of this. 4/10
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Whipping: It was pretty good actually. I was able to whip things into the gap despite the many factors wanting to go against it. There isn’t much to say all else really. 7/10
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Binding Properties: Now this is what surprised me the most, I expect some awful binds, but these babies could handle most of my trick binds even if they were small. I sometimes felt that they were even better than the usual kitties. Really surprised, and I loved it, a thin string carried a lot on it’s back! 9/10
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Longevity: This is where the string shined for me, a thin string lasted me 2 days, and this is coming from a player who usually changes string by the hour. It was really great, and I was actually really surprised at just how long it lasted. 10/10
Overall Final Score 6.625/10 - The strings were actually pretty solid. They had a few pitfalls though, their lack of ability to hold string tension and the pure thinness of the string really left you asking for more. With a few changes I feel the string will actually hold quite true and blue, and could even make it up there with the high quality boutique strings.