101 Uses for the CU

I found this avatar picture over at YoYoNation and just had to get a full-sized version from Jason.



I quite enjoy it when people have fun with their yo-yos.

Reviews and more reviews

Over at YoYoNation new reviews for both the Nimbus and Eric's Silk have made their appearance.

String, Pads, Bearings...

I just found this short review of a couple of a Alchemy products over at TheYo. Alchemy string, Vapor Pads and our Beefcake kit.

First Nimbus Review

The first Nimbus review is up at TheYo, you can read the impressions here.

CU vs. Stikfa

I found this picture on YoYoing.com.



Well, it made me smile.

CUs & Nimbi are Shipping!

Ok, I'm a bit late in this update having had some trouble posting in the last day or two. But let's not dwell on the past. Both the CU and Nimbi are shipping or have been shipped to retailers. We did the shipping to international customers first (last week), followed by the US-based stores (this week). The following stores will receive their orders shortly and should have some Alchemy products in stock real-soon-now:

A-two-Z (US), Bird In Hand (US), Boing Skilltoys (ZA), Gyroscope (RU), Infinite Illusions (US), LetsHaveFun (UK), Lofty Pursuits (US), Spingear (JP), Wonderful Yo-Yo World (TW), YoBoy (AU) and YoYoNation (US).

11 Retailers, 7 Countries, 5 Continents. Get one, get a couple, you can even build your own 132 gram yo-yo...



(Disclaimer: We don't advocate playing with crazy-insanely-heavy combined yo-yos. It cannot be too good for your wrists, arms or sanity.)

Nimbi are back...

... and assembly started on Friday. We are still waiting on a couple of CUs, we have a lot, but not enough for the orders we have. They should arrive any day now, they have been shipped. So things are a bit delayed, but with some luck these should ship to retailers sometime this week.

Wood is good

I ran across the other Alchemy, The Alchemy Project, a while back and promptly forgot about it. Last night I was reminded of their yo-yo by a fellow Alchemist and it being a slow news day, decided to post it. This is what they have to say under the heading of The Return of the yo-yo:

Forget Second Life, forget the Playstation and Nintendo Wi, don’t you ever wish we could sometimes go back to basics? At the Alchemy Project we decided to do just this and have created our very own yo yo for your pleasure.

Simply drop us an email or give us a ring and we’ll send you one out direct to your door!

Just a simple wooden yo-yo with a very nice intricate logo, simple effective, and best of all it comes back up. Since I haven't given my Playstation the attention it deserves lately, I should actually take them up on their offer.

The better to CU with my dear

All the Alchemists are having fun with hubstacks lately. Eric is at it this time - modifying a CU. CU, Alchemy FHZ hubstack kit, YYF T-stacks. He says it best, so I'm not even going to try and summarize. (I even stole his topic)

So, what you have here starts with a CU with a HEAVILY modified Alchemy hub stack kit. The post/nuts were machined down so that the outer edge of the stack sits inside the outer edge of the yo-yo rim. Then I took a set of YYF T-stacks and reduced the diameter so that they would fit inside the rim with a little clearance (I’ll bet I’m the only person on the planet that has a jam chuck for hub stacks – you turners will know what I mean). Then I scanned the CU eye image from the lid of the box it came in, enlarged it slightly, and printed it on self-adhesive clear label stock. Then I laminated the label stock, stuck the images on the modded T-stacks, and trimmed it around the outside.

Product Updates

Just a quick note on the availability of the CU and Nimbus at retailers.

The CU should be ready to ship to retailers through the course of next week - we do have orders from Australia, UK, USA, Taiwan and a host of other countries. (Details as to the specific retailers will be announced as we ship, we just want to give everybody a chance to get their orders in. At the same time our retailer page needs an update, but that will happen at the same time.)

The Nimbus will be a bit delayed. We are not 100% comfortable with the workmanship on all the items, so we sent them back. On our part this means frustration, longer time-to-market and extra costs, but the end-result will be a product that meets our standards.

We are sponsors of the 2007 US National Yo-yo Contest and are aiming to have some Nimbi available at the contest, however, things need to be 100% right... We are also hoping to have some protos for future models available for testing, but I'll update on that bit as soon as we are sure of what models we believe are ready for wider testing.

Sightings

Some Alchemy sightings and reviews from around the yo-yo web... The ExtremeSpin forum has reviews for both the 4th generation Silk and well as the CU. The last review contains one of my all-time favourite quotes:

Ok, well first when I received this yo,.....I was kinda disappointed. lol Seriously I looked down into my palm where sat a micro sized yo no bigger than my keychain FH. Thinking to myself $**t I just paid $65 for something this small?!?

I had almost exactly the same thoughts when I first received the first protos, although mine was more along the lines of "What were we thinking??!!".

O, yes, before you ask - we are trying to keep Rob as busy as possible, but he still finds time to do funny mods like this hubstacked Cyclotron. A very creative use of the Alchemy FHZ kits, slightly modified to fit in a slightly modified yo-yo. (And that is slightly modified to Rob, not to the rest of us...)

Update: I thought I'd add the pictures...

Wholesale orders

Well, it is order frenzy time. Wholesale orders for the first run Nimbus and 2nd run CU are coming in thick and fast. Expect to see these models (almost) everywhere in the very near future... sooner than you would expect.

I CU've been busy

So you already know that we have some Nimbi ready for assembly. Well, the factory is very busy - we also have batches and batches and batches of CU parts ready for action. Here is a picture of some of them, fully printed and ready for final assembly.



The problem with waiting for axles and bearings for final assembly (leaving unassembled halves floating around), is that little pictures consisting of CU halves mysteriously start appearing all-over:



Expect to see these fully assembled and packaged at a retailer near you soon.

(un)Official first look at the Nimbus

You got a sneak peak of some of the protos at Worlds. You played with it. And now you can almost see the final production version.

The Nimbus has arrived in our factory in all it's machined and anodized glory. We have not finalized the art (or the color thereof) yet, but I thought I'd share some pictures anyway. So here it is: non-final, un-official first look pictures.

CU Hubstacks the hard(er) way

Well, we all know the Alchemy FHZ hubstack kit fits on the CU, I even posted some pictures before the release. (Some more detailed info over at YoYoNation and TheYo - tip YYJ length axle.) A day or two ago somebody shared their setup on yoyoing.com/news and yo-yo doctor Mo got really interested. The only problem he had was that he didn't have an Alchemy hubstack kit on-hand and couldn't wait.

So he made some himself:



Mo wisely says: Also I would not reccommend trying to make the parts like I did. Some things are just easier to buy; but on short notice; I just wanted to do the mod so ...... Well, if you have the time, want it now, have the skills and abilities, and it can turn out like one of Mo's creations, why not? For the rest of us, the FHZ hubstack kit does quite well.

Update: Mo posted some more close-up pictures over here.

Update 2 & 3: Added links to YoYoNation and TheYo threads on using the standard Alchemy FHZ hubstack kit.

Double-barrel fun

At the time of small-gapped bearing yo-yos, Doctor Popular created the beefcake mod - putting two yo-yo bearings into a narrow-gapped yo-yo, making the gap much-wider than originally intended by the manufacturer. Well, it seems like the sands of time has blow over this one, but recently the idea has started to make a comeback. It is not that we don't have enough wide-gapped yo-yos available, rather that players always want that extra bit of space. (And there are benefits to having a little groove for your string right in the center of the bearing...)

To make things a bit simpler for those large-bearing fanatics, Alchemy has released a fun upgrade for C-size bearing yo-yos:



Packaged as two bearings in all of their de-shielded goodness, the kit results in a bearing 0.250" wide, or 1/3 wider than a normal size-C. If you want to get a couple, head over to Infinite Illusions.

Seems like we produce more after-market stuff for other yo-yos than for our own. Well, this statement is not true (since we concentrate on both the yo-yo and parts markets), but for this post you may think it is. Why? Since we have even more upgrade stuff available.

Also released this week are some really thin diameter Vapor O-stickers, cut to fit either an 888 or into the o-ring groove of a YYJ yo-yo. Much thicker than normal pads, these result in flush silicone response when installed - no mess, no fuss, no more silicone rings falling out. Once again Infinite Illusions has them in stock right now.

More CU sightings

After a long absence, Takeshi has put out a new video. Apart from being really cool in the normal "let's have fun" Takeshi style, it also features a CU sighting here, there, and especially here...



If you don't feel like leaving the page, the actual video, graciously hosted on yoyoing.com/videos, is embedded below.



Ok, watch it now. Watch it again. Download it - it is well worth it.

C(the)Video

I've just stumbled across this CU video by Tie McClellan posted over at YoYoNation. For the lazy amongst us, or those so eager to see it that they cannot stand clicking a link, it is embedded below:



In another thread, Tie also posted more pictures of the CU, this time with some smaller counterweights. (As used in the video.)

Very nice. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one enjoying 5A with mine.

CU Around

There has been a couple of CU info and review threads popping up all over the place before and since Worlds. In case you missed it, here is a summary of the more interesting ones:

An I need one now thread popped-up at YoYoNation just before Worlds. There are a couple of pictures in this otherwise long thread, and goes from the days before release until some lucky souls were able to pick up some at A-two-Z and Bird In Hand. My take? Out of the box it can do a 7 minute 15 second sleeper. I won't try and replicate that feat.

So some people got them and they immediately started posting some reviews, including this one featuring comparison photos of the CU next to a Duncan FHZ and YoYoFactory 888 (and in the palm of a hand!) and this review with a counterweight and next to an Anti-Yo Busine$$.

The first review was also reposted at TheYo, and we learned that the CU can also be used as a footbag, hubstack catches (utilizing the Alchemy FHZ hubstack kit) from 40ft up and some off-string. After hitting some walls, ceilings, and all kinds of other unimagined horrors, it came out unscathed. Don't try this at home folks - even stainless steel is not indestructible.

After all this CU madness, honorable mention goes to the Nimbus. It was mentioned in the review thread at TheYo as well as over at YoYoing.com. If you were (and even if you weren't) able to give it a test-drive at Worlds, we will have the first production run available really-soon-now.

Hello World!

Well, the 2007 World Yo-yo Contest is over and Alchemy Yo-yos is now officially in existence. It feels good.

At the 2007 WYYC we launched the CU and had an updated version of Eric's Silk available for sale. Smoother, heavier, even better. (If that is at all possible.) We even allowed people to try prototypes of the Nimbus, which if the earth, moon and stars all play along should be available in the next 2-3 weeks. Feedback has been extremely positive and we look forward to letting this model loose on an unsuspecting public.

More CUs will follow shortly afterwards - yes, that is right, we sold out the first production run. It went a bit quicker than we expected, but we also have to carry some of the blame - due to some miscommunication between us and the machine shop, we only got half of the units we wanted to make available at the contest. To make a long story short, everything we had available sold out in the first 2 hours. Not bad for a little stainless steel wonder.

Alchemy has signed up 3 additional retail stores at the contest, which brings the number of retailers that will carry our products to 8. This means that we cover a large part of the globe, with retailers in North America, Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa eager to receive their shipments.