I received a Northstar Fingerspin today. I very much liked the idea(s) behind this release, and was happy when it arrived today.
Throwing it, I found its performance to be pretty good, but a notch below the Protostars that I own, so I thought I would try a different bearing and see if there were any change.
To make a long story short, the process of removing bearing and spacers from the yoyo, then removing the spacers from the yoyo was arduous, at best. Attempting to use another bearing didnāt āfitā well, so I attempted to put the yoyo back together as it was, originally. This proved to be surprisingly weird, as - among other things - I felt a cracking sound as I was screwing the yoyo back togetherā¦well before the fit had become snug.
Unfortunately, the yoyo then had vibe the likes of which I have never seen before. I attempted to make things better via taking it apart and putting it together a couple of times. However, things got worse instead of better. The last time, one of the spacers was thoroughly stuck - off kilter - in a yoyo half, and attempts to remove it resulted in chewing though the metal, with bits falling onto my desk.
I am not new to tools, nor to yoyo surgery. Been doing it, on and off, since the late 90ās.
Sadly, the yoyo is now little more than a vibe machine. The center track bearing remains, so I am left with something
I donāt remember ever having a more difficult time with a yoyo. I thought briefly about trying to obtain another one, but I do not wish to have a yoyo that is so difficult to work with. There are too many other options out there.
The āissueā isnāt a new one. I have a protostar I really enjoy, but you couldnāt pay me to unscrew it. Theyāve had years to fix this, and I still think they may find a way. But until then, I feel that YYF values customization and durability less than performance with these northSTAR and protoSTAR models.
I have 2 Protostars - one of them for a few years - and they are so good Iāve never felt the need to unscrew one, so thankās for the heads up on that! Iāll bear it in mind should I ever feel the desire to do so.
Did you get the Northstar from YoYoExpert? If you did, give us a call or send an email. Iād be happy to take a look at it, if it canāt be fixed weāll most likely swap it out.
Interesting, I thought I read somewhere that the new NorthStar does have spacers, but not the kind that lock onto the bearing. I see that information was wrong. I havenāt opened mine up yet, as I learned long ago you donāt want to open a ProtoStar or a NorthStar unless you have to. I remember people complaining in 2013 that the Yeti used the same sort of death grip spacers, Iām amazed theyāre still in use in 2017.
My NorthStar has given me no problems so far. Itās a pretty fantastic plastic. At only $4 more expensive than the Replay Pro, YoYoFactory has really bested the Replay Pro. It strikes me that thereās nothing particularly NorthStar about it, with the shaved weight and Jensen being long gone. He said on Reddit that it just looked like everything else. The weight is the same as the StarLite, which it plays more like than the NorthStar. I suppose they wouldnāt release it in GITD and neon colors and call it the new StarLite because NorthStar is a more bankable name. And it likely didnāt make a whole lot of sense to call it a new ProtoStar when stores like YYE still have ProtoStars in stock.
I bought a ProtoStar from YYE recently because they were running out of the original red and silver ring model (which are now sold out). I had much more trouble with that than Iāve had with the new Northstar, probably because those have sat on a shelf for five or seven years. The response was loose from the start, so I siliconed, and very quickly the bearing became very loud, gritty, and responsive, as Center Tracs often do, so I had to deal with a death grip spacer to change it. It plays great now and sits beside the new Northstar in a case.
Itās unfortunate yours has been such a problem. From now on Iāll have to keep the death grip spacers in mind when I recommend the new Northstar.
I had a very similar problem with a Speedaholic. It worked alright to start but it did have a slight vibe, negligible though.
After a day or two the bearing caught something in it and got very suddenly loud. This has happened before with some of my other throws, normally I can disassemble, clean the bearing with some alcohol, add a very small amount of lube, reassemble it, throw for a few hours and itās right as rain, silent and unresponsive.
I did this with the Speedaholic and when I reassembled it, the vibe was horrendous! Nothing strange that I noticed when reassembling it, no noises, and it screwed together just fine, tightened it to snug (but not too much). But the vibe was crazy and pulsating like Iāve never seen before. When watching the yoyo while spinning you could very clearly see that it was vibing as much as a half inchās worth of vibration. Completely unusable.
From that point forward it was unrepairable, I disassembled, reassembled, check the axle, bearing, bearing seatā¦no matter how I put it back together it was unusable.
Iām very skeptical of plastic throws because of this. The only one I put complete faith in is the Skyva. I have four of them now and every one of them is smooth as butter and plays exactly as expected.
