The Pre-Production Duncan Freehand - glasseye
Well the Duncan Freehand is going to be released within the next few weeks and I was able to get my hands on one of the pre-production Freehands. The contestants at the Golden Apple contest received one as well. The body is made of the same plastic as the Avenger (correct me if I'm wrong Steve) and is also the same color. The sidecaps look like they came off of the TransAxtion, but are white with the new Freehand logo. Steve said that the sidecaps come off, so when I have some free time, the caps are going to take a nice warm bath in some RIT dye.

The body shape of the Freehand is the same as the shape of the Duncan Wheels (basically a reversed imperial which = a nice wide butterfly). The guts of the Freehand consist of the usual Duncan bearing and brass spacers, but this time around they've added some O-rings to the mix (same size as the Team Losi and Variflex O-rings) so that the gap is adjustable. For the return system, they added pads or discs (whatever you prefer to call them) which look and feel very similar to the ones used in the SuperYo Samurai. There is a distance of approximately 1/16th of an inch between the outer diameter of the bearing and the inner diameter of the return disc. Steve mentioned that it was designed this way to allow more string into the gap when doing a trick without running interference with the return system.

In terms of play, initially the Freehand didn't quite live up to all the hype. In it's stock setup, it's a decent yo-yo, but not the godsend that many were expecting. It did lots of things good, but not outstanding. Time to break out the mod kit! First thing I wanted to get rid of was the adjustable gap. Call me lazy but I just don't like fiddling with gaps since it's just another factor I don't want to deal with. I took out the Duncan brass spacers and O-rings and replaced them with Bee spacers (no O-rings). This change alone seemed to increase sleep time but the Freehand still wasn't as smooth as I like my yo-yos. I removed one of the return discs and replaced it with a Turbo Disc. It made a world of difference. It went through backspin tricks nicely, iron whips were no problem, and it opened up real big for suicides. In this modified state the Freehand is comparible to one of Stan's wheels which is no small feat.

I still need to put thing thing through the paces and will probably make a few more minor adjustments to cater to my style of play. But this should be a great starting point for all of you who want a killer one-hand yo-yo. It doesn't take much effort to modify the Freehand for your tastes and it seems that the Freehand was actually designed with the modder in mind. Looks like Duncan is starting to turn things around. Many thanks to Steve and the guys at Duncan for providing me with one of the pre-production Freehands. Now get some sleep.