Personality - “the combination of characteristics or qualities that form an individual’s distinctive character.”
So, with that being said, maybe when someone says that the yoyo has a good personality, that means they look the shape, how the weights is spread out onto the rims, the wall, the bearing, or other characteristics of a yoyo. At least, that’s what I think it means.
since yo-yo’s are just hunks of “stuff”, the only personality in them is the personality YOU bring to them. so i think when people say that, what they really mean is that the yo-yo resonates well with their own personality, or whatever they want to express with their playing. most yo-yo’s feel really similar these days, so players are starting to appreciate more subtle differences between one model and another. sometimes they might call those differences “personality” (or “soul”), but i think it usually just comes down to what we PROJECT on the yo-yo. over the years, we’ve come up with a lot of terms to describe yo-yo’s which are fundamentally unquantifiable and/or useless.
Agreed with the two previous posters… not much to add here. It’s about whether that yoyo’s characteristics “hit the spot” for that player or not.
It seems to me that yoyos that have extreme resistance to tilt are often accused of “lacking personality”; hence bi-metals get singled out a lot. But if you love that tilt-resistant feel, that yoyo might have personality for you.
I feel like people used to associate vibe with personality lol.
Ed I really vaguely remember you posting something once about two people with identical staffs (you may have been one of the people I can’t recall) and both were able to tell who’s was who’s very quickly based on feel.
To me how you live your life transcends into your yoyo, what type of person you are goes into everything you do, obviously.
As silly as it may sound, how you tune, what pads, what bearing, yada yada yada, all depends on who you are, and the yoyo will play accordingly. I remember when I first was starting I went to one of my first contests at MA states and tried a lot of Clifford_Ball’s throws. They all had a similar feel, his bape felt like his brand new stargazer (? Some blue and grey two tone yyr that was new at the time). It kinda made sense to me but I wasn’t able to put it into words, still can’t really.
I’ve had one yoyo that I designed and had made in 08, been a daily throw ever since. It’s my only yoyo that has real personality, to me.
Personality is much easier to experience than to explain.
I think Zorro’s posted definition says it all. When someone is discussing yo-yo personality, I understand it to mean “characteristics that make that yo-yo stand out from the average throw.” I don’t use the term a lot, but it really fits my throws that I might call laid back or “easy going.”
Also, I agree that the 2016 Superstar and TooHOT are amazing. But personality-wise, you should check out the Nightmare too. That one has a really different feel, and I love it’s personality too.
ha! yeah that was probably me. i think pretty much anyone who has studied jodo for awhile would be able to pick their jo out of a pile blindly, based on feel, weight, the arrangement of indentations from contact, the abruptness of the edge, etc. certainly, that’s true of swords, guitars, or yo-yo’s, too (which are all much more unique than a 50’’ staff).
HOWEVER, you could give two jodo masters the same jo, and each would express their art uniquely and distinctly with it. in the end, a staff is just a wooden rod THROUGH which our own personality and individuality is shown. same with a yo-yo. one or another may have qualities you prefer, but no yo-yo has personality without someone throwing it.
I see it as an abstraction, a way of explaining technical things that one don’t really understand in scientific ways, but know and feel that it’s there.
In the bi-metal case, they are probably talking about the amount of stability it has to offer, since most bi-metals are very stable and having a lot of rim weight, they feel “machine-ish”, for a lack of better words. And because it’s getting farther from feeling “organic”, we humans are less able to relate.
Then people tried to explain the phenomenon by saying that it is lacking personality.
