YoYo Workshop Armament: A High Speed YoYo Review

The guys at YoYo Workshop hit the scene back in March of 2014 with an absolutely crazy design, The Tornad-Yo. To be honest, I was not interested in their first design. The rims looked too thin, add an almost 70 gram heft to it and it also looked quite painful. Their second release came out in August of the same year with the Tornad-Yo v2, which had a more conventional shape and began to get people talking. Fast forward one year from their freshman effort and we are now looking at their latest release, The Armament.

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I have the Trim Party(purple-ish) color way of the Armament.

It is an Excellent yoyo.

I would say your description of the bearing is incorrect.

You stated 'The bearing is a string centering Center track style bearing"

That is incorrect. The bearing used is a string centering bearing.

A Center trac bearing is by definition a bearing in which the outer race surface has a ‘center trac’(a defined flat area bordered by inclined angles terminating at the bearing edges).

One primary advantage of the YYF Center trac bearing is a wider latitude of functionality.

A centering bearing like the one displayed in your Armament image specifically locates/contains the string in the exact center of the bearing. In cases of higher string tension to near neutral string tension as string segments get stuffed into the yoyo gap, the string will resist lateral movement because the string is snug in the centered area and the string resists climbing up the angles of the bearing surface.

A Center trac bearing offers distinct advantages over a ‘centering bearing’. 1. The ramped edges keep the string away from the response/and/or/yoyo walls. 2. A Center trac bearing allows easier sideways movement of the string loop because as string segments get pressed into the gap, the loop confronts much less resistance while sliding across a flat ‘trac area’.

Think of it this way… Using car seats as an example.

A centering bearing would be like a bucket seat. They don’t call it a bucket for nothing. If you sit in a bucket seats that ‘fits you’, you are ‘in’ that seat. Pretty much centered in that bucket.

A Center trac bearing is more like a bench seat with outer arm rests. You can slide from side to side if need be.

So technically one term does not define the other. A centering bearing is ‘not’ a Center trac bearing.

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I think the photos by Victor are causing the confusion. The photo shown in the review do show a nice shallow V-cut centering bearing.

However, the Armaments did ship with a center track bearing, or at least the three I bought all did. The ones shown in the YYE store also show a center track bearing. I don’t believe these are the “Center Trac” brand though.

A simple update to the review to mention that the bearing shown in the photo isn’t a stock Armament bearing is probably all that needed.

Coincidentally, YYWS have now moved to using a v-cut centering bearing for their next throw, the Halyard.