About a month ago or so I wrote a review on the Duncan Bimetal Bumblebee, and despite it being a beautiful well made yo-yo I had some serious complaints regarding responsiveness vs how it was advertised.
Well- I’m writing this to update my opinion of the throw. I tried putting the response stickers back on it again and after about an hour of throwing it, something magical happened and it kind of “broke-in” I guess, and now, sure enough, I have a yo-yo that is reliably responsive, capable of a nice forward pass and even looping.
I was a bit too quick to judgement here. It seems that (for me at least) the friction stickers just needed to be sort of broken in and scuffed up a bit.
So - in conclusion, I now think this is actually a great modern responsive throw for the money, and I apologize for my haste in judging it too harshly when I first tried it.
As a side note though, I still think they should have done the same thing they did with the Duncan AL butterfly and included a separate half-spec bearing and shorter axle so that you have that option and you don’t have to rely on the finicky response stickers.
Cool glad I’m not the only one. I feel somewhat bad for giving it the initial review that I did now that it is finally working better. Although- it still does have a weird feel when you toss it. Kind of like how unresponsive yo-yos are when you throw them- you try to give it a hard toss and it ends up flying 2.5 feet in back of you. It must be something related to how the string wraps itself up and then unwraps. It just feels nothing like throwing a sleeper on a old school responsive yo-yo. But aside from that I’m happy with it now
That sounds like something that could be ironed out a little bit. The drop at the bottom does feel pretty satisfying, and the responsiveness, in my experience, seems to vary a little still depending on how long I let it sleep. Short sleepers return pretty well, and then longer sleepers lose a little. Like the yoyo is balancing itself out or the stickers are reacting somehow physically. It’s not the worst, and it’s nice to have a clearer view of how it works. It’s interesting.
I made the mistake of taking mine apart to lube the bearing and now I can’t get the bearing seated properly. I can slip a piece of paper between the bearing and the seat. I’ve tried everything but a vise to press it back in. Any ideas? Is it supposed to be like that?
Hmm. I took it apart and put it back together. I don’t have a problem. Did it get misthreaded? Is it the original bearing? Are the stickers on it? Are the pads secure? Maybe something’s off with those?
…or in the morning. So, this is as far onto the half that I was able to get the bearing and it doesn’t seem to want to go any further on either half. Is that the way it’s supposed to sit? In play it responds, but not predictably.
Not really. It’s hard to get a power grip on it because it’s so narrow, but it definitely feels like it’s as tight as could be. If it was a wider yoyo, it feels like it would likely strip rather than pushing the bearing in more. I might try to rig up something to protect the surfaces and press it in a vise. But…not sure if it’s worth the time. I might just leave it and throw something else.
How difficult was it for you to unscrew the yoyo? And also how difficult was it for you to remove the bearing, do you see any marks of ano stripping off the bearing posts?
My brief guess would just be that the fit of the bearing post was extremely tight to begin with and just sanding down the bearing post a tiny bit will solve you issue if that’s the case. There was a thread about bearing posts being too tight a few months ago.
I don’t remember it being too hard to unscrew in the first place (and I don’t remember seeing any signs of stress/scraping on the ano on the posts. The bearing definitely seems to be on the post since it’s not falling off, but maybe just not on all the way. I remember the thread about tight bearings and have dealt with that a bit before, but the smaller bearing size and slimline shape make this a little harder.
I took mine apart. I have the stickers on, but I also have the tiniest gap. The response you’re talking about is normal for this yoyo, I think. It looks like that’s the way it’s built.
If you do, try them for quite a while before you decide. Ours seem to have gone through a phase with them. Yeah, it just seems to be designed with some different concepts. I can’t imagine many people feeling like it’s a normal yoyo at first, so just go with what you find.
Still though, there shouldn’t be room to slide paper under the bearing. It shoud definitely be flush.
Have you tried apying pressure to it via downward force on a flat surface?
If you do be sure to be slow and patient while you do this if you decide so, apying pressure evenly - i had to do this to get my fingerspin caps on a freehandAL.
I definitely did as much as I could within reason. I don’t have a very high quality vise, but I might try that. Or I might just leave it as a reminder not to take my chances when other people clearly state the facts and the facts don’t sound great.
