Man, I want one of these things so bad now! lol
I have no idea how it’s going to play, but I LOVE the way it looks! Super old school!
This has shot up towards the top of my ‘must haz’ list!!
I wonder how much they’ll cost…and if they’ll come in the cool wooden packaging, or if that’s only for people who buy it at world’s.
Duncan Tourney by Owen Ekblad
Sunday, August 4, 2019
Taking the double-rimmed yo-yos to the next level: Introducing, the Tourney! Signature yo-yo of Owen Ekblad.
Imagine a simple yo-yo design with no gimmicks at all: Fewer edges, a straight-up competition-ready yo-yo, AND bi-metal, AND double-rim? Yep. That’s the Tourney.
The body shape is heavily related to our 2017 model the Grasshopper X. This was Owen’s go-to yo-yo then, but he wanted something more suited to his style. So we took all the best bits of it and added a little bit of magic to make it something you’ll love just as much as Owen does.
The best part of it is that its great look and uniqueness don’t hinder its playability. The Tourney having a stainless steel inner rim actually plays a central role in making this yo-yo fast, stable, and giving it an unmatched spin time.
- The Process -
It took us literally six prototypes and thousands of dollars just to make this yo-yo as super cool and wonderful as it is…
The funny thing is, the first Four yo-yos were literally just finding a way to make this yo-yo actually work. The first four prototypes were used to make this yo-yo balanced, smooth and to find the proper ring placement, so every millimeter counted. Something as small as a tenth of a millimeter adjustment makes a huge difference. By the fifth prototype, we even gave up. We were defeated by the monumental engineering feat that became simply producing this yo-yo. We even told Owen he should stop using the prototypes and start using other Duncan yo-yos that fit his style until we finalized new design!
We silently explored other options and asked two engineers and CAD masters what was going on and what the things we needed to improve to make this yo-yo as stable as possible while also taking into consideration that a small change in the placement of the inner stainless steel ring can cause an incredible amount of vibe. On the sixth prototype, it was like magic. With all the constructive input and adjustments made by our engineers, it became one of the most well-balanced, best-shape-having, best-ring-placement-having yo-yos we’ve ever made. It was such a successful improvement over all the previous prototypes and it was a design triumph like we’ve never experienced before.
The Tourney is our eighth bi-metal product and we are incredibly proud of this yo-yo. Having Owen Ekblad involved and blessing this yo-yo made it into something extra special for us, and we know you guys will feel the same way. Owen’s first ever yo-yo was a Duncan Tournament (hence the name “Tourney”), and so this yo-yo is really nostalgic and sentimental to him. It’s the culmination of and an homage to his yo-yo journey, and it’s a signal of the bigger things to come. He put a lot of love into this design and we really know you will feel it when you play with it.
The Tourney will be released at the World Yo-Yo Contest in Cleveland, USA. We will release this worldwide couple weeks after.
We would like to ackowledge Chris Mikulin for inventing the double rim design on monometal yo-yos, Rafael Matsunaga for his helpful inputs, and our engineers in Asia for completing the design!