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[rusty]

The snow is starting to melt here in Norway and I have started practicing with my new tops bought during the winter. I have got some Salvador tips and I find them quite hard to do wire walker with. When I wrap the top it just stays on the string and does not climb it as with the normal tip.
Is there any other technique used for this trick with this tip?

[Dizzy]

I'm going to take a shot from the hip here and say that your string is perhaps not the ideal gauge.  I don't have any spintastics tops with Salvador's tips, but I have several other tops with similar tips and it is my experience that if your string is too thin, the top will just spin and not grab the string and run.

What kind of top and string are you using?

[John Buechele]

Even with a thicker string it is still going to wire-walk very slow. I'm sure one of our resident scientists/physicists will be along to correct my terminology  but I believe the reason is because there is less of a surface area on the tip for the string to grab on to. Smaller surface means less friction, which makes for a slow walk or perhaps no walk at all.

[rusty]

Even with a thicker string it is still going to wire-walk very slow. I'm sure one of our resident scientists/physicists will be along to correct my terminology  but I believe the reason is because there is less of a surface area on the tip for the string to grab on to. Smaller surface means less friction, which makes for a slow walk or perhaps no walk at all.

Ok, but people can still do wire walkers with the Salvador tips?

I am using a Trompo Grande with the standard string it came with. I think this string is quite thick.

[ta0]

The short answer is that yes, you can wire walk with Salvador's tip. As John said, it is a slow walk. So be patient with the top: if you pull too hard you are going to bind it and kill the spin or make it gyro. With a lighter pull the loop will be more open and higher, away from the narrower part of the neck.

The reason I think is two fold. As John said the surface contact area is smaller and there is less friction. More importantly, the torque applied by the string depends on the distance to the axis of rotation, which is smaller (this also affects the apparent friction seen by the top).  The tip is good for regenerations because the lower friction decreases the losses in the non-regen parts of a trick.

[poptop]

I think the narow tip acts like a low gear ratio too.

I find that that a firm pull that puts the string in good contact, but does not bind does trick.

Works best with a lot of spin too...

[ta0]

I think the narrow tip acts like a low gear ratio too.

I find that that a firm pull that puts the string in good contact, but does not bind does trick.

Works best with a lot of spin too...

Those are good points.
If the tip is narrower it should take more turns to cover the same distance if there is no slippage.

Is there slippage?
I just measured the neck of a Salvador tip and got 3.3 mm diameter or a little more than 10 mm circumference.  If the top is spinning at 3000 RPMs (a reasonable speed after a boomerang by the time you finish wrapping the string around the tip while on the hand) the top is doing 50 turns per second.  With no slippage the distance covered would be 50 x 10 = 500 mm per second. That is about two times faster than what I get, so there is some slippage but not a lot.

[hemingsoft]

I agree that the problem is two-fold.  Each side has its own part to the problem as I think ta0 pointed out. 

Part one is the ease with which as string can grip the neck of the tip to force the the string to not see more than one location on the tip.  Think of this as trying to start riding a bicycle with bald tires on a frozen lake.

The second part is exactly how ta0 calculated.  This is equivalent to having larger tires on your bike but maintaining the same rotation speed.  The larger tire will travel more linear distance at not cost of rotational speed.  However, being a top forum.  The energy necessary to maintain this larger tire rotation is greater than the smaller tire (no free lunches!!).

In short, larger friction helps get the top going, and then the larger diameter will make the top travel the string faster.