Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Jeremy McCreary]

Anyone have thoughts on or experience with ForeverSpin finger tops? The hype is awful, and they seem way overpriced. Any merit?

[ta0]

Anyone have thoughts on or experience with ForeverSpin finger tops? The hype is awful, and they seem way overpriced. Any merit?

I've got one of the 1st generation (the steel gold-plated version). The 2nd generation tops were a little bigger.
Even the ForeverSpin people admit that the top was designed for the looks, not spin duration. You could say it is beautiful . . . specially if you are impatient 
By the way, it looks suspiciously similar to the Inception movie top (which came out three or four years earlier).
But I have to admit that their marketing is top notch 

PS: I always have to think twice what WRT stands for. With respect to this abbreviation, I would prefer it to be spelled out. But it is probably just me 

[Jeremy McCreary]

Thanks, ta0! It sure looks like an Inception top knock-off to me. And by calling it "ForeverSpin", they're trying to convince us that spin time is the main selling point, even though they know that it's not.

I shouldn't be surprised. The guiding principle in commercial and political marketing these days is "The truth is irrelevant. Just say what you need to and use every trick in the book to make it stick." Unfortunately, they have lots of tricks.

Addendum: Even more unfortunately, I just learned today that there's even a term for this sad state of affairs: "Post-truth society". Heaven help us!

[Kirk]

PS: I always have to think twice what WRT stands for. With respect to this abbreviation, I would prefer it to be spelled out. But it is probably just me 

Noun
WRT ?(plural WRTs)
    Initialism of water restoration technician.
    Initialism of wireless router.
    Initialism of wireless receiver/transmitter.
    Initialism of world rummy tournament.
    Initialism of western running tour.

[Jeremy McCreary]

Don't forget Wisecrack Reverberation Tank.

[Atomic]

Foreverspin tops (although I don't own one) are one of the makers that have been an inspiration for me as in my opinion they are like the McDonalds of tops in that they might not have the best time spinning or ornate top in the world but they know how to sell a lot of tops. I was a professional salesman at one time and when I see Foreverspin successfully painting colourful pictures and telling stories of happiness, I know all is well in the business marketing world. This is not a criticism in any way, as I said they have inspired me to find a niche and make something between what they do and the really ornate multi-component tops of custom makers. So whether there is merit in their claims, I think that is subjectively an individual opinion as they are not outright lying about anything as I can see. Their way of selling the hype is not mine but I see them as a success story and wish them well. Maybe one day I'll go back to Canada and while there visit them and buy one just for the sake of saying thank you for the ideas.

[Iacopo]

Foreverspin I think is probably the best existing commercial operation in the world of spinning tops.
The people directing Foreverspin are very intelligent and focused on this aim, I think.

They have choosen a design for their top the easiest possible to realize, certainly to keep production costs to a minimum.  It takes them one minute to make one of their tops:


Then they have realized an excellent advertising campaign.  Simplicity is presented as a virtue.
They don't lie about anything, but they are malicious:  the name "Foreverspin" makes think to a top able to spin for long, when reality is that their design is quite poor as for spinning time, for various reasons.
They sell a special diamond like carbon coated spinning surface, which is advertised as having the lowest coefficient of friction possible, (they affirm 16x better than their previous base !), which could make think to much improved spin times, but so it isn't.

In the whole I admire the business sense of these people.

It can take us artisans so much time to make just one top..  Or maybe not ?


 

[ta0]

A year ago I got a coated spinning base from ForeverSpin through a Kickstarter campaign. I was advertised as:

A New Experience, Diamond-Like Carbon Spinning Base
After a lot of R&D, we managed to bring a technology used in the latest Nascar and F1 cars to our desks.
For the first time ever, we have managed to engineer fused silica glass with a diamond-like carbon surface finish to achieve not only an extremely hard surface, but more importantly, the lowest coefficient of friction possible! It is now 16X better than our previous Kickstarter base!

I have used it lightly, mostly for spinning a ForeverSpin top (gold coated) and Dalton's turbine top (polished bronze steel). No major hits, just the normal drop of the top when you try to spin it fast. A while ago I noticed a little black dot close to the center. I could feel it with the finger so I thought something had stuck to it. When I tried to remove it with my fingernail, it became a line. Ok, I thought, it's a smudge. So I worked it a little more with the fingernail and to my surprise I realized that I was lifting the coating with no effort!    Here is a photo of the result.



In my humble opinion, either the coating on my base was defective or, more likely, this coating is not adequate for this purpose. Actually, I believe ForeverSpin does not sell the DLC base anymore. I'm not a guy that likes to complain or return things, but as they stress so much that every top has a lifetime guarantee, I sent them the photo to see what they said. They answered saying that they "did not cover damage".  To be fair, they did offer me 30% discount on a new base and a free green "mystery" top (this was St. Patrick's day and they had that offer), which I did not take. I think it was a good offer but fell short of a lifetime guarantee.
Built Forever is their motto. 

[Jeremy McCreary]

Well, Nascar and F1 cars don't last much more than a year, either. You'd think they would have seen that one coming.   

[the Earl of Whirl]

Ha!  Interestingly enough, I recently got one of these as a gift.  I will look at it more closely, now.

[jim in paris]

F1 cars don't last much more than a year,

or even less!! like in today's Grand Prix !


jim

[ta0]

How many different adjectives can you find to advertise different metals by their different looks? Foreverspin tries hard:





I'm guessing people that buy a collection ("museum") of 5 or more might be disappointment by the relatively small difference in feel between these tops: the vast majority weight very close to 28 gr and their only obvious difference (and only among some) would be in color. Nevertheless, I confess it would be interesting to hold the two extremes in each hand: a magnesium top weighting 6 gr and a tungsten top weighting 60 gr.

[Jeremy McCreary]

Have to admit that I love the idea of hefting a chunk of unobtainium in my hand as much as the next guy -- you know, like meteorite iron-nickel, or Damascus dilithium, or the tantalum-nioboum-irridium-polonium alloy at the tips of bunker-busting tactical nukes.

But at the end of the day, my one EDC-style top just sits for low play value, the palladium plating notwithstanding. The rather dysfunctional ForeverSpin-like stem doesn't help.

Q: Would someone with a both a heavy and a light ForeverSpin  be kind enough to post their spin times -- preferably on the same low-friction surface?

Please say exactly which metals the times are for. Thanks!