yo-yo #'s 58 & 59: freehand Mg's

sweet luxury.

one of my most persistent memories of autumn 2005 is of playing that g-d "duncan boy: around the world" video game. remember? it was a big promotion by duncan. you played their video game (on their site, of course), and every week they announced a batch of prize-winners. said prizes ranged in value from their shrink-wrapped t-shirts to their "hardcore" plastic line to... the illustrious... freehand mg. although it would have been cool to win anything, the mg was the only prize i really wanted, and i'd be lying if i said that, month after month, i didn't feel a twinge of jealous anger as i watched other folks score them (among them my good friend, joey fleshman - JERK!!!)

i played that game... WAY too much. i even got really ridiculously good at it, and by november, my name occupied like 7 of the top 10 hi-scores. (this is depressing to look back upon and admit, because it was not a good game.) edit: i found it. try it out here.

the freehand mg had made its debut at the world yo-yo contest a year before. rumor of it had circulated through the boards for some time, nudged lightly by the postings of its architect, steve brown. released as part of duncan's 75th anniversary extravaganza, the mg was to catapult the standard of "yo-yo luxury" to new heights. though it was supposed by many to be more a marketing ploy than anything else, it ended up a spectacular player, easily better (in my opinion) than anything made by duncan before or since.

the most brilliant move steve made in creating the mg was commissioning the great shinobu konmoto (s. kon) to hand-craft it. sure, it came in a big wooden box, and yeah, it had a bunch of special-edition counterweights, and it had that fancy ceramic bearing, but big deal. shinobu is THE quintessential yo-yo craftsman. anyone who knows anything about the highest standard of yo-yo's knows his name, due to his creation of multiple "world mod contest" award-winning pieces, including "nostalgia", held by many to be the single most aesthetically incredible yo-yo ever made. although the work of eric wolff is admittedly "more my style", s. kon's use of crazy materials (origami paper? a coke can?) and intense dedication to his craft more than qualify him to be referred to as the world's pre-eminent modder. my favorite of his creations (which i have only seen in pictures) has to be the "revolver", which is itself, a raw freehand mg encased in form-fitting leather. try as i might, i cannot imagine a more exquisite yo-yo.

the mg was forged (rather than machined) from 99% magnesium, with around 1% other goo (and stuff) to help stabilize it. raw magnesium is, of course, highly flammable, so there was some discussion as to whether the 1% would offset any risk of blowing up one's house. i can't say i know the science there, but having owned 5 mg's (and having walked the dog hard with one), i haven't destroyed anything besides my preconceptions regarding what "a fine yo-yo" is.

for april fool's day in 2005, dave's skill toys ingeniously photoshopped a "museum of yo-yo history" mg pic into a radioactive neon green, changing the caps to read "freehand Pu", and put it on the storefront for $1,000,000. several idiots on the skill toys board were convinced (in some cases for years) that there was, in fact, a plutonium freehand. some even e-mailed steve about it. i wish i could find that picture.

the first run of mg's came in two colorways: a sparkly red powdercoat (which remains my favorite yo-yo color EVER, and directly inspired the special edition flying v's to follow this post) and a clear anodized silver. initially i assumed the latter was just raw magnesium, but having seen steve's prototype mg's, which have developed a beautiful oxidized patina, it's clear that their coated (lol - get it? ok that was dumb). a few years later (after duncan sold out of the first run - 250 of each color?), they released another series in either blue sparkle or black ano. the 2nd run differed from the first structurally in that on one side, the response area was recessed. by 2006, recessed pads had become all the rage, and the mg's flat response area was becoming outmoded. they also had new caps, which were awful.

the first mg that i ever played was actually one of the black ones. i was at va states 2006, and the aforementioned joey fleshman asked to use my metal yo-yo (an hspin g&e2), which i handed over slightly grudgingly. joey nonchalantly passed me what i assumed was a non-descript freehand, white zero caps and all. after a few throws, i was totally mystified as to how this zero easily outplayed my good & evil. it was absolutely smooth, the response was perfect, and it seemed to grind forever. i told joey as much, and he said "well it ought to be good - it's an mg!" i was so shocked, i almost dropped the thing right there. he used fhz caps so that no one would be inclined to steal it out of his case, which i found both wise and slightly depressing.

i refer to that experience often when i hear someone say the mg plays just like a fhz... yeah... like the best one you've ever played times a thousand. the mg uses the same guts as the other freehands, but the weight distribution is TOTALLY different. the tolerances of magnesium compared to that of plastic enable a level of smoothness that's TOTALLY different. even the material itself feels cold and alien and strangely refreshing (even compared to aluminum yo-yo's). if you honestly can't tell a difference between them... you need some more experience before making sweeping pronouncements. no one who has spent a significant amount of time with a freehand mg AND a plastic freehand has ever tried to convince me that they play the same. granted, the differences might not be valuable to you at all.

there are lots of fine reasons to want a yo-yo, the most obvious of which is certainly the level of play. people want a yo-yo that will enable them to yo-yo as "well" as they can... but even that takes on different subtleties. most kids i know would say they want a yo-yo that "lets" them do the hardest tricks they know, preferably with ease. that outlook has never much appealed to me. i think it's useful to push the limits of your play, but it's also useful to try yo-yo's that make you work. these mg's handle anything i throw at them, but neither is as easy to set up or work with as any number of modern aluminum models. it's just as reasonable to want a yo-yo that makes you feel a certain way, which is definitely the case with me and these yo-yo's (actually... probably MOST of my yo-yo's). the value of a thing isn't always directly tied to its utility... or at least that utility isn't always defined so linearly.

people get really worked up over the mg, i think because of its outlandish retail price. the natural assumption is that, since it's the most expensive thing out there (or one of them), it needs to play "better" than everything else or it amounts to a colossal waste of money. the issue with that is that there is no "better" than than everything else. the best feeling i've ever taken from playing yo-yo has been with a beat-to-hell 20 year-old wood one. i wouldn't sell it for $1000, let alone $400... but that doesn't make it worth a damn to anyone else. i've had just as much FUN playing imperials as this mg, but somehow, that fact doesn't make me regret paying a lot for the latter (nor would i pay more than $3 for an imperial - weird). virtually every performance yo-yo on the market now can outplay the mg by SOME standard, but those standards are all as artificial and subjective as the ones we use to judge between this or that yo-yo player.

the mg costs $400 (at least), but it's "worth" what it's worth to you. mg's almost NEVER resell for retail on the boards or on e-bay. they aren't really a good financial investment; certainly in the short term. but that's not really why you buy it. i like the way mg's play. they have a weird, undefinable character that you don't find anywhere else, and which i vastly prefer to any other duncan (including the screaming eagle line). i also like them for the nostalgia, and for the community's fervor around the time of their release. it reminds me of a time when, imo, duncan and its crew was the most exciting thing in yo-yoing. i likewise associate those memories with that time when yo-yoing was at its coolest (and still pretty new to me). playing the mg rekindles those feelings, and that's "worth" it to me.

the first mg i actually acquired was the red one you see here. i bought it from steve as he began selling off some of the arsenal that had taken over his attic in 2006. i've played it alot, but it's only got one legitimate ding, which it earned in its first hour of play at the playground my daughter and i used to frequent. at some point thereafter, i picked up a "spare" red, which i ended up relinquishing. i just purchased another for cheap, but am not likely to hang on to it. the black one has a great texture, but i don't play it as much (i'm not a big grinder). since i first saw them, i DETESTED the 2nd run's caps, and so i've made sure that all of my mg's get a pair of the o.g.'s, which i find classy and understated. some guys prefer to rock their mg's nude, but for me the bright white caps and their contrast with the yo-yo's body is a big part of the aesthetic appeal.

sometimes, i'll admit, i get caught up in the "value", myself. i look at these two yo-yo's and i think "over $800 (though i can't actually say i paid that)! that's the per capita gnp for some of the world's poorest nations! and i have it allocated to TWO YO-YO'S???" it is pretty striking, and it underscores the ridiculous ways in which i've spent my money... but then - so does the rest of my collection, and if you're reading this, so does yours, (probably, to some extent). it's natural to hold a really expensive yo-yo like this and feel guilty for having it. it represents a lot of roast beef sandwiches. maybe i should sell them all and donate the proceeds to charity, right? the mg's inherent extravagance naturally engenders these feelings.

but it's not necessary to abandon all material possessions in order to be a good, giving person. if we, who can afford expensive toys are honest with ourselves, and are willing to recognize our privilege, using it to do a little good in the world, then that may be enough. playing yo-yo isn't yachting or car collecting (the $800 pricetag of a pair of mg's wouldn't buy me so much as a steering wheel in those hobbies). it's important to apply some perspective, and in fact, keeping a nice yo-yo as a sort of talisman might even encourage one to live a little more generously (wishful thinking maybe?).

i dunno... these mg's are going to sit somewhere. better, i tell myself, that they sit somewhere they're appreciated, played, and enjoyed. better that they bring some joy out of someone, who can then pass it on and share it with the world. better that they make me aware of my blessings, many and varied as they are, that i may be more willing to give of my joy, my time, myself.

one thing is certain to me: i don't feel like withholding any aspect myself when i play them.

... and you can't put a price tag on that.

yo-yo #45: steve brown/jason tracy tung-oiled clean machine

that was a mouthful.

do you have a yo-yo that just always seems to play amazingly? whatever you do to it? no?
though you might need night goggles, a pickaxe, and a compass to find one, i recommend you give it a shot.

this yo-yo has a seriously amazing pedigree (at least it did before it got to me). the yo-yo world appears to have forgotten '97 world champ and tom kuhn/bc wood thrower, jason tracy, who originally got this yo-yo from its maker, brad countryman. he gave it to steve brown, whose legend is obviously undiminished. i have another jason tracy clean machine that's quite a lot like it. i received this one from steve some time in 2007 (he basically said 'pay me what you think it's worth whenever you can' - i think i sent him $50 at one point, but i'm still in the hole for the other $999,950.)

unlike my other jason tracy clean machine, this one isn't actually 'clean' (i guess neither is the other technically). like my other example, it's got a printed 'special' logo on one side and the 'custom yo-yo's' logo on the reverse. UNlike its counterpart, however, jason applied a generous tung-oil finish to this one. i don't know much about the virtues of tung-oil finish (i remember i used to want a carvin bass with it though), but it sure is beautiful. and since the finish isn't really raised off the wood at all (as on a regular laquer-finished no jive), you still get all the benefits of a clean machine. maple is a very underrated response mechanism.

since i got it, i've pretty much only played this yo-yo in imperial. it's really lovely, and i never thought i'd want to risk hurt to it by playing it hard. now i have like 30 no jives though, and among those are a great deal that i find it easy to keep pristine. the other day i was playing the aforementioned jason tracy no jive 'a', and i realized "damn... this thing plays perfect every time, and needs way less fussing than my laiminates or my #1. if only i had another one like it." and after 2 years or something, it occurred to me that... i do. i'd still rather not fling it against the asphalt, but i think steve and jason would both appreciate the value of a yo-yo played more than that of one shelved.

i gave it the same rough setup as its brother (shimmed out the gap a tad, added one dead duncan sticker and type 8 string), and behold, it plays just as wonderfully. i hit my benchmark 3-in-1 trick, 'spirit bomb' with it on each of my first 3 tries (a feat i've never done on another wood axle yo-yo).

on an epic tangent, i want to quickly document the 'no jive spirit bomb club'. it's getting kinda big, and i feel like i should record the names of the members someplace so i can remember later. (basically, the "njsbc" is just a silly little club for people who've hit spirit bomb on a no jive. to be in the club, you have to do it in front of one of the existing members. it's a totally informal thing that was started at iyyo last year (i think red came up with the idea for a 'club'?)) anyway, the members (in order of induction) are: brandon jackson, adam brewster, joey fleshman, red (1st try), yuuki spencer (1st try), tyler severance (1st try), me (200th try), samm scott, andre boulay, sebastian brock. if i missed you, remind me.

anyhow, i don't know what it is/was about jason, but both of the yo-yo's i have that were formerly his just seem to play awesome of their own accord. like i CAN'T set them up poorly. some other no jives you have to be ginger with and really struggle to get in tune, but this one and its bro just seem to say, "you want to yo-yo? right on! let's yo-yo amazing, just 'cause!" it ALWAYS seems to spin true, which is impressive when you consider that the vast majority of it is stuff that used to be alive... and maybe it still is in some way.

this yo-yo is just always in harmony, which is kind of where i want to be, as a person and as a yo-yoer. i want my yo-yoing (and my surfing, and my aikido, and my skating, and my music, and my stay-at-home-dadding) to be truly Appropriate. i want my actions to really suit the circumstances. i want to stop forcing my self and the weight of my will upon the world. i just want to spin true.

yo-yo #37: steve brown 888 (small bearing)

heh... in college, my band was called "37". we were a bizarre amalgamation of friends/musicians who just sort of congealed at bc in 1995. pete was a full on "marty friedman/jason becker/dream theater" progressive shred guitar player. hilary "the guy" was a d.c.-scene punk rocker who knew all of the epitaph catalog by heart and oscillated between several hairstyles that seemed to set him in a different dimension from his preppy college peers. i was a jazz/funk bassist who felt the need to inject at least 3 slap-solos into every song, to the chagrin of bandmates and audiences. at first we had no drummer, and we seriously played our first few shows with a programmable roland drum machine (who we introduced to the crowd as "roland"). later, we picked up brian norbert blaise binkowski, an indy rocker who fit nicely into our "no one fits at all" setup. we played a lot of shows (including a pair of epic ones at "the rat" in the month before it closed), released a tape (yes, a TAPE), and had a lot of fun. the name grew out of the fact that hilary and i were perpetually running into the number 37. that and the "37 dicks" scene from the movie "clerks". anyway, sorry for the diatribe.

...

this is one of the few yo-yo's that i've won (at least that holds any real significance to me).

during the end of the boom, steve brown was one of the only yo-yo players i had heard of (along with all of team proyo and a few of the thp kids, but i didn't remember their names at the time). steve was interesting because he didn't conform to the totally introspective, nerdy stereotype that the uninitiated first associate with yo-yoers. to call him a "punk" (even in the most positive sense) would still be pretty limiting, because steve's one of the most multi-faceted guys i know, and categories just seem to evaporate off of him. anyway, when i finally made my way back to "the scene" around 04, i was really happy to see him still riding the wave, leading the duncan crew, which he had transformed from a battleship being outpaced by the more agile boom-companies into an edgy and relevant force. when i was learning yo-yo as a y-camp counselor, duncan was so far behind, it had become a punchline. in the intervening years, due mostly to the success of steve's freehand (both the style and the yo-yo) and brilliant branding, it had developed a well-deserved legion of fans.

it's funny how one can be 25ish, and pretty well-balanced and intelligent, and still geek out about a totally regular person and act like they're a complete rock star. although i wouldn't use the term "man-crush" per se, i was pretty taken aback when steve e-mailed me out of the blue one day in 06. as i remember, it was a pretty innocuous question about bass gear, but it generated a series of conversations that developed into a surprising friendship (not like "best buds" and tandem-bikes, but as two people who could commiserate on music, kids, comics, and on being geriatric as far most yo-yoers were concerned). we shared enough similarities to make sense to one another, but enough differences to still be interesting (ok at least i felt like that). although he was one of the guys that really shook yo-yoing up, i really appreciated his knowledge of and respect for the yo-yoing of the past, and he was a major influence in my gravitation toward responsive, fixed axle yo-yo's.

anyway, this would have been right around the time that steve left duncan amidst tumult and uproar (as is his wont). almost immediately thereafter, it seemed, he was whisked away to asia with the yoyofactory guys doing all manner of f.a.s.t. demos. shortly after he returned, yyf was hard at work designing the g5 (the first ideas for which, if i remember correctly, were sketched out on a napkin by ben and hans during the trip), and it was clear that steve would be a central piece of the yyf puzzle. i had known that he had nothing but glowing praise for the 401k, and in january of the next year, he showed me the side-art for what would be his signature yo-yo (the "fb.one", which was never realized). he said that while he loved what the factory was doing, he needed something with a small bearing if he was going to come out of "retirement" and compete again in 5a, the style he invented.

as 07 pushed on, yyf announced a contest called "tricked out", built around its flagship yo-yo, the g5. participants were to create tricks using the g5's free-spinning hubstacks, which while amazing, clearly weirded most yo-yoers out to the point that they simply ignored them. in the first few months following the g5's release, the renaissance of innovation that steve had implied would take place just hadn't materialized. the g5 was such a solid 1a yo-yo, that the hubstacks had remained little more than an under-utilized "extra" which, aside from pull-starts, users were blissfully ignoring. in effort to change that, the "tricked out" contest would award 3 winners: best overall trick, most views, and peoples' choice. each would receive their choice of yo-yo's from the yyf vault. i came up with a pretty run-of-the-mill top-tip trick i called "mess with the bull" (basically making a "bull" or "666" sign and grinding the tips between your index and pinky). it was an easy trick, and i thought i had no prayer. my norweigian pal (and fellow skater, though MUCH better than me), pekka won best overall with a sick 'hacky-sack' trick, dropping the yo-yo to spin on his foot, before kicking it back up to his palm. bemis advertised his trick brilliantly on yoyonation and was way ahead of everyone on views. the only chance i had was peoples' choice, and for whatever reason, people voted for me. i still have no idea why (here's the original vid, btw).

the same day that ben emailed me to tell me i won (his name registering in my email as "pedro flores") and to ask me to "choose my prize", steve confided that he'd be getting a small bearing signature 888 in black hardcoat WITH some of his tattoos engraved around the outside. i immediately replied to ben with an innocuous (though transparent) request: "well... do you have anything small bearing... and black?" predictably, he replied saying they had something in the works but it would be a few weeks, and did i mind waiting? of course i didn't. in the intervening weeks, i visited steve in va beach, where he was performing on the main drag for the summer. i tried out his pre-pro loop 720s and was flabbergasted when he revealed the ingenius response system. he also let me know (amidst much hooting and laughter) that yyf was creating red "dice hubstacks", both as an homage to steve's 5a, and as a means of circumventing duncan's counterweight patent. the original plan was to be able to string the two halves of the dice together to form a counterweight (which would really have stuck it to duncan). in the end, however, the dice were a brilliant, but purely aesthetic addition.

unbeknownst to me, there developed a real problem with the hardcoat process, and no more than a dozen of the small bearing steve brown 888's were produced (aking this one of the rarest yo-yo's i own), one of which arrived at my door about a month later. they had some large bearing ones for sale at worlds that year, but the black ano can't touch the hardcoated ones that were never made again. i met ben at that contest, and, in addition to the dice stacks he tossed me a red and black f.a.s.t. yo-yo holster "to match my yo-yo". ben talks loudly, both online and off, and his manner can seem brash and intimidating. however, his generosity just never ceases to amaze me.

steve used his 888 to freestyle that year. although 5a had taken on a life of its own, and was being pushed forward in new directions by many of yo-yoing's top innovators, steve had intimated that very few people (less than 5) actually "got" his original intentions for it. his big reason for being excited over the yyf hubstacks was his ability to use them to get closer to his original goal (which i will not describe in detail here). his hubstack freestyle was insane. INSANE. and if memory serves, he was sick as stink when he did it. as he predicted, most people couldn't look at it and appreciate how difficult it was, or its potential to change things. they still don't, and that's a shame. he actually posted it online a few weeks before the contest so that judges could see it and at least try to think through how the'd score it. it just wasn't the same 5a as most everyone else's. he walked through pieces of it with me in virginia, and though i'm not a freehand player, it was so ambidextrous, and so reliant on impossible pinch-catches, it was hard to imagine him "going clean". he didn't, and it was hard to be bitter over my other good friend, tyler severance winning the division. i know steve was disappointed, but it remains, in my eyes, one of the most innovative contest freestyles ever, but the most innovative stuff doesn't always reveal itself clearly or immediately, and certainly doesn't always win. 2 years later, people still don't understand it or its significance.

maybe it IS just "man crush residue" talking, but i certainly associate this yo-yo with steve, with the concepts that underpin that freestyle, and with the potential still just sitting there waiting to be exploited.

steve brown's 07 worlds freestyle