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.