Hello. This is my first post on this forum but I have been reading up on all the wonderful information here for over a month. I wanted to introduce myself and give thanks to all who share their knowledge to help those of us starting out. I personally don't know anybody who knows how to play tops, so the information on this forum (as well as Pulpowsky's and yoyo-expert) has been a life saver. I am from Puerto Rico and although Spin Tops were traditional toys in my grandfather’s generation, today is mostly a lost art. There are only a couple of artisans who still make the traditional wooden peg tops (I actually found one, and will later post a video of him turning a top for me).
Last May I bought a Saturno Roller for my 9 year old son while on vacation and in the process of learning how to throw it in order to teach my kid, I got hooked immediately. I’ve never been a player of skill toys, but something about the spin top just caught me.
Considering work, family and never having played with skill toys before I'm pretty proud of my progress. I have bought a few tops (BK,blizzard, saturno..), but lately I am mostly playing a Giulia bearing and a trompo grande fixed with diabolo tip. I have 4” Watts on the way.
Right now I can do the tricks on the spintastics 8 award (except arm walker for some reason), plus boomerang, trapeze, wire walker, and a couple of others.
I started to go through the motions of regenerations and I can do (sometimes) up to two consecutive rollercoasters to hand with my trompo grande before losing speed.
I am mostly trying to concentrate now on learning or observing how the top react to different movements and string positions (which is not easy to figure out) and most importantly trying to improve my CONSISTENCY.
Learning tricks is difficult, doing them right consistently, now that is challenging.
Like I said, I wanted to introduce myself and I will probably be asking a lot of questions, but I will try to make them on threads that deal with the subject I am asking (that way it also helps other who research the subject).
Thanks again,
Juan
