The Schmoove Groove

by The Curator | Dec 23, 2024 | Articles

Recently someone asked what the deal was about Schoove Grooves on the YoYoExpert Forums. There were plenty of great answers, but the best would be the genius behind the Groove, Doc Pop’s, own explanation

.

As @fradiger mentioned, this page has some good info on Schmoove Grooves.

The basic idea was to remove string friction by reducing the amount of surface area the string could touch. On a high wall yo-yo with a narrow gap, a schmoove groove could really reduce the amount of surface that a string could rub on while sleeping.

I first talked about the idea on an old yo-yo forum (probably yoyoing.com’s old forum). Then a year later, I asked @Feralparrot to mod a Anti-Yo Fluchs and some YoYoJam yo-yos to add the grooves. I liked them and decided to make them a main feature of The End when we were working on those.

The word Schmoove (or Shmoove) was a stylish way to say “smooth”. It was a common meme-y way of speaking back in 2006-ish, similar to how some people say “smoov” these days. The goal was to make yo-yos play more smooth, so “Schmoove” made sense. I think the original name I used for these was “Shmoove Rings”, but that changed over time.

It would be hard to prove how much the reduced surface area affects play, but there was one research paper that a yo-yoer wrote about the effects Schmoove Grooves had in generating extra air friction, which could then help in keeping a loop open during a slackacide. It was a dissertation written by a grad student who was studying aerodynamics, but the paper is no longer available. Hopefully some other folks can help find some of the 3D models and other cool yo-yo images from that paper.

When we shipped The End with Schmoove Grooves, I thought they’d start appearing everywhere. They look awesome, they don’t add significant cost to production, and I believe they work really well. But it took years for other manufacturers to adopt the idea. Anti-Yo produced a yo-yo called the YWET that had an added groove, but they said it was for putting in a second o-ring to increase response.

Another attempt at keeping the string from rubbing against the inner was was to create a “bump” where the bearing and response sit, so it isn’t flush with the rest of the inner wall. CLWY may have been the first to add that bump to their design. This bump sort of looks like a step from the inner wall to the response area, and it creates a gap similar to what schmoove grooves try to do.

I believe A-RT was the first yo-yo company to finally add Schmoove Grooves to their designs, and that’s when it finally started catching on. This is also where the size of schmoove grooves started getting wider and wider. When I was exploring the idea, I was nervous about what the gap would do, so I ony removed little bits of inner wall, then left a bit sticking back up, before another section was removed. You could say it was a tepid way of reducing inner wall. But after A-RT started exploring the idea, the grooves started getting bigger and bigger, with no little walls sticking up between them. This is how we finally ended up on the great big schmoove grooves (or “schwalls” as some people call them).

I might be wrong on a few details here, so feel free to correct more or help fill in gaps.

André Boulay’s Brief History of Yo-yo Response

by The Curator | Dec 16, 2024 | Articles

This article comes from a post on the YoYoExpert forums in reply to a question about why O-rings were abandoned for use in yo-yo response. André drops a fair bit of lore here that is an extremely interesting read, and a fantastic look into yo-yo history

So response in yo-yos was largely starburst / raised plastic until Duncan released the Freehand yo-yo with the rubber pads. At this point in time yo-yos were still responsive though – we used to have the lube the bearing to keep them responsive but the pads served the purpose of keeping them responsive while also allowing the bearing to not need thick lube (Pro-Yo also had cork response pads before this). An interesting side effect of the duncan response pads though specifically was as the rubber wore off on them they were cloth underneath and it left you MUCH less response but turned out in a good way – it was still ‘just enough’ if you were good enough… and as you can see with Yuuki Spencer in his winning routine it actually kind of helped create the bind in my mind by default because as they wore out and as spin RPM got lower binding was just required. (But this was also the case with Renegades as the starburst wore out or even YoYoJam SpinFaktor’s as the lube on the bearing wore out).

Then in 2002 YoYoJam released its first yo-yo with o-ring response called the Matrixx. I was actually one of the first people to ever try the prototype with the o-ring (I think the only other person who had seen or tried it around my time was our very own @yoyodoc). Dale brought it with him in October 2002 to an event we did at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History called the Toy Invention Festival. Dale had been trying to find something better than starburst response since it was often too grabby and he didn’t like how the Duncan response pads would wear out over time. He filed a patent for o-ring response at this point – but the o-ring groove was then born!

They continued to defend this patent for awhile and generally speaking o-ring response was a win for YoYoJam. The first double o-ring yo-yo to release was actually also the @yoyodoc Mini Motrixx! Then later that same year in 2003 Johnnie DelValle used a double o-ring Hitman to win the World Yo-Yo Contest with a super wide gap, shims, and a konkave bearing which proved to usher in the future of competition yo-yo setups as we know it today in terms of completely unresponsive as you can get.

People started recessing friction stickers into Duncan yo-yos grooving out the space to help make them unresponsive with better response. So the idea of rubber being recessed into yo-yos just made sense. Then enter silicone!

I recently tracked this back with a couple yo-yo friends because I had been interested myself in the origin of silicone in yo-yos. Turns out the first person to try it was Tomonari Ishiguru at the end of 2003:

Then from there we believe it was some of the Italian yoyo makers who actually tried implementing ‘flowable’ silicone into yo-yos even before @Carlo_Oxy

Once flowable silicone was released I remember trying it but also being completely happy with my setup in YoYoJam yo-yos without it for a long time… However over time as we all got better at freestyle and no one else could use rubber o-rings by default people were both forced to use silicone and also found it offered improvements.

Silicone provides much stronger binds which also off a throw gives much more power on the throw even with a really wide gap. The flat aspect of the silicone too combined with the grip of the silicone made it a better alternative (YoYoJam’s patent at this time after many years of legal patent back and forth was also thrown out because old pictures of a Duncan prototype with o-ring response eventually surfaced from someone).

Then in 2006 the Peak released with flowable silicone by default by @caribouchris and in my mind really made it the ‘standard’ and peaked peoples interests…This was also eventually further popularized by @DocPop with his tutorial on the BOLT.

Then came Kentaro Kimura with the K-Pad at the early stages of Turning Point and YoYoFactory and the 888. YoYoFactory with the release of the G5 & more so the 888 really set kind of a new standard in high end metal design at this time kind of achieving perfection in all aspects of spin quality, standard response, and of course the introduction of hubstacks. It kind of brought attention to silicone response rings and also made it the ‘standard’ (Kentaro’s K-Pads specifically).

At this point in time YoYoJam trying to compete with the incredible success of the 888 released the Axiom and actually lasercut their own version of silicone rings similar to today. The depth of the pad at this point was changed since a classic old rubber o-ring required more depth – so YoYoJam also acknowledged the new standard and future models incorporated the “Slim Pad” Size 19mm OD popularized by the K-Pad (of note it clearly matches the dimensions of the o-ring YoYoJam first used just different depth to the groove).

Sorry that was a lot – but I guess I was waiting for someone to ask me about that one!