Hi everyone,
I thought I might give a comparison between the upcoming MK1 Yoyos x Spinworthy RBC and the DocPop Weekender.
The Doc Pop Weekender is an extremely popular metal responsive for good reason; it’s superb. I’m hoping that discussing the two side-by-side might help inform those thinking of purchasing an RBC. This is not a review, its only a comparison of the two yoyos. I’m not going to suggest which one is better at the end. Let’s just go ahead and love all the yoyos.
Diameter
Looking at the yoyos from the top, you might be able to see that the RBC has a slightly smaller diameter than the Weekender. The RBC has a diameter of about 54mm compared the Weekender at around 56mm. Due to the denser 7068 AL and the caps used in the RBC, we needed to reduce the diameter from the wooden Spinworthy Bloodcell (57.5mm) for it to clock in light enough at 47g. The Weekender is made from 6061 AL and just a hair lighter than the RBC at the higher end of 46g. It’s accurate enough to say the the RBC is about a gram heavier.
Width/Wall
The RBC is about 2.5mm narrower than the Weekender. The RBC has a taper leading out of the inner wall giving it a wider gullet for the string, but the Weekender has a greater overall catchzone due to its butterfly shape. I havent found these differences to make either yoyo more catchable than the other.
The Weekender has a much higher inner wall than the RBC. A lot of people swear by high walls for stall stability, but I don’t feel this necessarily makes tricks in and out of stalls easier. Varials may stay put more easily on the Weekender, but these kinds of tricks are far more about player finesse than the hardware itself. As long as there is enough inner wall, these kinds of tricks aren’t a problem and the RBC has plenty of wall in my opinion. If super high walls are your thing, then now you know the RBC is much less exaggerated in this area.
Guts
Now we come to what I consider the real meat and potatoes: the guts. Both yoyos differ very significantly in this area. The Weekender takes a standard sized A bearing, whereas the RBC uses an MR85 bearing. As you can see, the MR85 bearing is significantly smaller in diameter, measuring 8mm. This was intentional to keep the bearing the same diameter as the wooden axle in the Spinworthy Bloodcell. We kept the gap the same as on the Bloodcell - 2.3mm. The intention behind this was to help replicate the feel and response relaibility of the wooden Bloodcell, and it worked tremedously. It feels a lot like a Spinworthy fixed axle on the throw, but with MUCH more power. The gap on the Weekender is a more generous 2.55mm. This gap suits the A bearing in the Weekender really well, making for very comfortable and easy going 0A play.
The pads on the Weekender are CoreCo pads (same as in the Alleycat 650B) and the pads in the RBC are our own custom ones. The CoreCo pads respond well and work really nicely in the Weekender and transfer the right amount of power into the spin. In the RBC prototpye, we had pads with the same diameter as the CoreCo pads, but found that it transferred far too much power into the throw and regens, making the yoyo extremely aggressive and also unpredictably snaggy. The huge pads compared to the smaller diameter MR85 bearing made the protoype furious indeed. Kyle Nations admitted that he was kind of scared of throwing the prototye and there is video evidence here in another thread of the yoyo trying to take @EOS44 's head off, smacking him hard in his glasses. (Erick, being the cool cat he is, just calmly and casually inspected his glasses and kept on playing.) For the production run, we significantly dialled back the pad diameter, making the RBC much friendlier and not snaggy. 1A is now much more achievable with it too.
The overall setup with the Weekender is really sound. It requires you to lube up the bearing to get your desired response sweet spot, which is commonplace with modern responsives. This means you can gear your Weekender to be more unresponsive or responsive depending on what you want to do with it. The larger bearing causes it to have a subtle thud at the end of the throw, but it’s hardly noticable and really isn’t an issue for most players (or probably anybody). The slightly larger diameter bearing means that the yoyo loops ever so slightly upward which is something only really noticable when compared to the RBC, but the wider gap helps keep this in check. The RBC has virtually undetectable thud at the end of a throw and does not loop upward any more than a well made fixed axle yoyo.
General Play
The Weekender feels casual and easy going. It’s really great for 0A and some 1A elements. It just does what it does really well and is very comfortable to catch. The nice open cup gives a lot of room for pullstarts.
the RBC is much more powerful and geared more strictly toward responsive 0A play. The setup is perfectly responsive right out of the box and the bearing requires no lubing. All you will need to do is eventually replace the pads when they wear out. In my prototype, I haven’t needed to replace the pads or bearing after hours of play, or even clean the bearing. It just seems to consistently just work. The dimples give great multi-directional pullstart capabilities and potential fingerspins.
I hope you found this comparison helpful!
