“It kinda was, but what you have to understand is that for awhile there was nothing out there that outplayed those mods. So you’d do a little work on a dremel or drill-press Takeshi recess, tweak the spacers, clean the bearing, and your Freehand would suddenly be capable of play that had never been possible - certainly not in an affordable plastic yo-yo. And nobody knew better - the modding is a big part of how we collectively figured out “better”. So it’s easy to look back now and be like “man that must have sucked”, but that’d be like saying it must have sucked to learn how to ride a bike because you fell sometimes. It didn’t. It was the BEST!”
I wish could like this comment 100x…very well said!!!
Says the fella who has Dremel-ed the bearing seat on several of his yoyos…
Modding yoyos was fun. Tinkering with toys and things is part of the fun for some.
As far as the topic, YYN had some really great threads. Vendetta’s anodizing thread for one. Lots of cool earlier ano work.
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Grendel
(The Voice of All Grendel’s world wide.)
43
Then after the mod Purge on yyn a bunch of us went to one drops forum and had a blast! I actually traded a Horgon from the planet Rissa and a giant Chaos Orb on that site. Man good times.
Yep, it’s key to understand that many of the innovations in yoyo tech had their origins in the modding sector. I used to turn silicone recesses in every FHZ that came my way (I even recessed my pristine FH1 because of the sheer benefits of that mod).
Here’s my latheless setup I used back in the day. Fun times!
I’m with @codinghorror on this. I’m grateful I don’t have to mod a yoyo to get top flight performance. I am only interested in this hobby for the fun of doing tricks. I have no desire to mod, hack, or otherwise make yoyos (or strings) for myself. It is no different, to me, than the ability to buy a great electric guitar right off the wall, without having to wind and pot your own pickups just to get decent sound out of it. All that may have been “fun” for some guys back in the day, but I’m glad I’m not forced to deal with it now.
I’m sad, I really thought I saved it before the forums closed. I just went back to see what pages I have saved and that wasn’t one of them though I SWORE I had it
