For anyone who thinks that modern 1A yoyo play has gotten stale, I present Exhibit A for the defense. Kyle Nations and Doc Pop teamed up for a pretty incredible video of modern responsive 1A play and honestly after watching this I’m running for my wood yoyos to see how many of these tricks I can figure out. So good!!
Kazuma Miyakama – 5AMay
Modern responsive 5A is the greatest and hardest stuff ever, don’t @ me.
Yoyos used are the Core Co. Parser and Alleycat 650b.
Deep State
Nehemiah Peterson and Drew Mrowiec-Barnhart work out some fixie tricks and get their knuckles dusted in this new video.
Yoyo used is the Deep State by One Drop Yoyos.
Ann Connolly – Basecamp Sherpa Review
YoYoFactory player Ann Connolly brings us another yoyo review from her YouTube channel, this one for the Basecamp Sherpa!
This new slimline yoyo from the Basecamp (CLYW x YoYoFactory) line ships responsive but comes with a longer axle and Center Trac™ bearing for unresponsive play. It’s also got aluminum caps and a fully hollow body design, and it feels like nothing else in your hands.
YoYoExpert just restocked the Basecamp Sherpa in all colors, along with a new color: Aqua! Scoop one up today!
First Look – Basecamp Sherpa
Basecamp, the ongoing collaboration between CLYW and YoYoFactory, has revealed its next release!
The Sherpa replaces the Moonshine in their product line while also serving as a noticeable evolution of the design. The Sherpa is still a slimline, reponsive metal yoyo, but now with metal caps that give it a completely different look and feel from anything else on the market. The Sherpa ships responsive, but with an included longer axle and CT bearing for unresponsive play.
Plus, it’s a responsive yoyo with a fingerspin dimple. Get brave, y’all.
Sherpa Specs:
Width: 35.95mm
Diameter: 58.04mm
Weight: 64g
Response: YYF Slim Pads
Stock: Spec Flat & 8mm Axle with a spare Center Trac & 10mm Axle for Unresponsive Play
Retail Price: Approx $60
Release Date: November 23rd, 2016
Basecamp – Backyard Moonshine
Basecamp, the new collaboration brand by CLYW and YoYoFactory, kicked off with three new yoyo releases. The Expedition for competition, the Jackknife for fingerspins and fun, and the Moonshine for walking the dog in style. The Moonshine is a slimline, responsive pocket yoyo meant to be played and beaten up, and we’ve got video to prove it. Featuring Alec Campbell, David Ung, Petr Kavka, Aaron Davis, and more flyaway dismounts than you’ve seen in a long damn time.
The Basecamp Moonshine is a one-time production run, never to be produced again.
Basecamp Moonshine Specs:
Width: 32.33mm
Diameter: 56.38mm
Weight: 61g
Response: CLYW Snow Tires
Stock: Half Spec & 8mm Axle
Includes Spec Bearing & 10mm Axle for Unresponsive Play
Fixed Friday: UFO Recaptures
Cast aside your bearings, ye fixed axle faithful, and join us as we take a step into horizontal responsive tricks. This may sound like a daunting challenge, as neither horizontal nor responsive play are particularly easy, but we can use stalls to make response work to our advantage with a maneuver called the UFO Recapture.
When a yo-yo is spinning, it’s going to tend to stay spinning in the orientation you threw it thanks to centripetal force. Stalls are neat, though, because they give us the opportunity to swing or rotate a yo-yo however we want, which lets us change directions mid-sequence.
The UFO Recapture is all about throwing the yo-yo out horizontally to a UFO (aka Sleeping Beauty or Flying Saucer) and then capturing it back in a sidestyle stall mount. In its purest form, this is accomplished with a horizontal throw, popping the UFO’ing yo-yo up so that it starts to respond, and then intercepting the yo-yo with the string so that it falls into a stall. The most difficult part of the trick is getting your string lined up and your timing right, remember to take it slow and hook your finger around the string.
Before you try this, you’re probably going to want to be pretty comfortable with the basics of sideways yo-yoing so you can get a good solid throw, but there aren’t many string hits to be seen, so no worries if you don’t quite have your sideways braintwister combo on lock yet. (hey, I still don’t have one!) The biggest difference between frontstyle & a sidestyle spin for recaptures is that a frontstyle power throw has the yo-yo coming back towards the front of the string and the sidestyle breakaway has it coming behind the string. I personally consider frontstyle easier to learn, but try both.
Oh, also, at 23 seconds in: if you do a horizontal broadway it helps you set up a double-or-nothing, which you can then recapture, but that’s probably a little more on the advanced end of things.
28 seconds in marks my personal favorite way to practice the recapture, which pairs it with a dumptruck-style half-swing from a trapeze stall into a UFO. This technique is one of the easiest ways to get into a horizontal trick with a fixie, because you already have control of the string once you restart, and I’ve used it in a number of tricks (one of which can be seen at the end of Mystical.) When you pair it up with the recapture, it can effectively become a repeater, which means you always know a way into and out of horizontal spin from trapeze stall—score! Adam Brewster did some neat things with this as well.
Immediately after the half-dumptruck/recapture is a silly little trick called “knockbacks” you can learn to mix it up, wherein you just bounce the yo-yo off your palm to reset the regen, tough love style… and after that is an even sillier trick, proving that you can catch it in a thumb mount and broadway out. Or not broadway out! But really, who doesn’t want more spin moves?
At 1:05, we take a break from the UFOs to explore a mount we haven’t talked about much on FF: the fake triangle stall. Pulling the string through the loop on a trapeze stall creates a fake triangle suitable for really big suicide loops, something that I used to my advantage with this weird semi-horizontal offplane monster, based heavily on Paul Yath’s 360 suicide. Ideally it would be even more horizontal, but it sure is nice not having to keep the momentum afterwards. After that, we have another suicide trick that shows you more ways to use horizontal tricks to create pauses: this shifts the plane by intercepting a kickflip suicide halfway through, tossing a whip loop over it, and then continuing into a mach-5 mount.
Finally, we close out the video with a cross-armed 1.5 stall pushed out around the arm into a UFO and recaptured in a double or nothing stall. Going around your arm and keeping the string structure clean isn’t easy with a responsive yo-yo, but the feeling is totally awesome, so I recommend at least giving the entrance a shot.
Thanks for tuning in, and see you next Friday for more bearingless brouhaha. As always, the yo-yos used were Duncan Butterflies & Wheels, and you can download the beat for free from my Soundcloud.