YoYoJam pretty much gave me 100% control over the design - at the time (2004) I took some rough drawings I made and faxed them over to Dale Bell who runs the YoYoJam factory and production. He took my sketch and made it into the yo-yo it is today basically - I did have complete control in terms of shape and weight and specific cuts on the metal weight ring.
I named it Dark Magic because I liked the overall sounds of it and in my mind if you do yo-yo tricks well it really does look like “magic.” I get that all the time at least and thought it would be appropriate to incorporate in the yo-yos name. The original artwork was designed by Johnnie DelValle and wasn’t necessarily for everyone but a lot of people at the time did get a kick out of the caps and a Chinese company actually copied the artwork on a couple different yo-yo designs they produced even keeping my name! After that we chose to use the current translucent cap design to appeal to a wider array of players - that one was designed by my wife Devon (who also designed the Legacy caps).
In terms of competition I did use it to win my Northeast Regional back in 2004 as well as compete at the 2004 National Yo-Yo Contest where I placed tenth - and of course you see it used in nearly every tutorial out there. It is still my pocket yo-yo to this day. Before it I had previously used the Speeder and Hitman.
For a long time I did play the Dark Magic completely stock - I would simply break in the bearing and go from there. Currently I use a KonKave bearing with no shims and a relatively tight gap - I find the KonKave bearing makes the yo-yo much smoother and the tight gap keeps it responsive for doing regenerations but unresponsive for whip and slack tricks, etc. The best of both worlds. 