What do you look for when watching yo-yo reviews?

General Yo-Yo
21

Alright, you opened the door haha.

So, at least for me, there are three factors that effect how snaggy a bind will tend to be on a given yo-yo.

1.) String thickness

2.) Pad Grippiness.

3.) (For whip binds) how fast the string whips through the air.

NOW, what I have been able to do, is assess these factors in a few binds, and modify how I bind to work with the current setup of the yo-yo and string. By now, I can make pretty much any standard setup work without an issue.

So, moving on to how I modify my binds to work with the response pad/string setup. The biggest factor that can be manipulated is probably the size of the loop of string going into the gap of the yo-yo. If the pads are less grippy, you can get away with a bigger string loop than slippier pads. Correspondingly, the thicker the string, the smaller the loop of string on the bind needs to be to have a clean bind (generally). So that means with grippy pads and a thick string, my string loop will need to be quite small to bind well. And inversely, with a thin string and slippy pads, the string loop must be larger. With practice, the size the string loop needs to be can be assessed quickly, and successfully implemented with only a few practice binds. And then you’re off to the races with consistently clean binds, no matter how snaggy the yo-yo (assuming it’s not completely insanely snaggy, which I’ve really never seen).

Now, in my experience, some binds have required special attention, and are harder to get consistently clean. The Guy Wright bind is one of them. One handed laceration style binds are this way for many people.

For the Guy Wright bind (and any variation), make your loop small. Like, really small. This bind will take pretty much any excuse to snag. Don’t give it one. This bind and it’s variations take some real practice to get consistently clean. But it is certainly attainable. I would give the same advice for the horizontal binds as well. Make your string loop as small as you can get away with.

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22

Ah I see. Thank you so much. My one handed laceration binds are mostly clean but I find that the Guy Wright bind is more difficult, probably due to the difficulty of controlling the size of the loop during the bind. My horizontal binds are either eating up way too much string or not binding at all and there’s no in between which is quite weird. The loop size also stays pretty consistent during my horizontal binds, so I think it’s something other than my loop size for my horizontal binds haha.

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23

For simple binds, this is the case but for more complex binds snag is definitely something that varies greatly depending on a yo-yo.

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24

No matter how skilled or knowledgeable a reviewer is, I have to feel a connection to the reviewer / yoyo-related content creator in order for me to really look forward to new videos. Some of these folks hit the nail on the head every time: interesting, not too short, not too long, not repeating the same thing over and over when doing a review. What makes me feel a connection to these people? Sometimes it’s from corresponding with them and sometimes it’s just something I can’t put my finger on.

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25

You know I tend to find the video reviews entertainment mostly. I have a pretty good feel for what I want in a yoyo and tend to make the decision based on spec sheets. Not to mention in today’s climate you don’t have time to wait on a review for most of the popular brands. Heck on a lot of drops you barely have time to enter payment information in time!

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26

Personally, I’ve found what I’ve said to be true for every bind I’ve done. Regardless of how snag-prone the yo-yo is, how you do binds can be modified after a quick assessment, and binds can be done cleanly. This has certainly been the case for me during my last years of throwing, on all the binds I’ve added to me repertoire.

Are there any binds that you’re referring to specifically that you’d call more complex?

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27

Id like to see some tutorials for slapping string into the gap to bind. Like with your leg or arm, you know what kinds I mean?

28

Agreed, it makes finding specs and colorways for older throws harder and it’s disappointing sometimes to click a link from google only for the page to have been taken down. Rewind does a nice job of this, they have a “museum” section that I’ve referenced a lot, especially useful when they include a picture of the box for throws that have custom ones (eg CLYWs).

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29

Absolutely! The old blog posts from yoyoexpert are still online but the store pages for those yoyos are long gone. Also, yoyoexpert regularly removes old colourway pictures from the store page. I can no longer find the pictures of the 1st run Exia now that the second run is up. Would be nice if those colours were just kept up as pictures but not showing up as options. Yoyoexpert should also update their specs for the yoyos, some like the mowl surveillance and the shutter have had their weight changed between runs but were never updated on the site, a bit confusing to see the specs of the old version of the yoyo on the store page for the new version. (That’s if you knew there was an old version, otherwise you would think the new version has the old version specs.)

However, the museum on rewind is very difficult to search through as the regular search functions only turn up the yoyos available on the store and not the museum. It used to return results from both the museum and the store, but now it is pretty difficult to search up old yoyos there. They should implement a search function for the museum as well. Right now I’ll just have to settle with using “site:” on google because a lot of times, rewind isn’t even on the first 30 or so results.

30

Here’s one:

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