The Terra Little Bit Bigger is one of my favorite kendama shapes. Being a tall guy (6'4") with big hands, it is always nice to pick up a kendama that is proportionate. I want to see the LBB's you all have in your collection, and any cool photos of them you have taken of them. Dama in photo: Terra Painted Maple LBB
Same boat. The little bit bigger just works so much better with my body and hand size. Don't have a picture right now, but I have a natural with a wood burned stripe and a mugen musou style drilled hole in the base cup for better balance. Anytime I really want to hone in and slay, it's pretty much my go-to.
I have both! These are a bit bulkier, the Tallboy is slimmed down. The LBB has a more unique shape, whereas the Tall Boy is an upsized kendama. LBB cups have flatter edges, and nice sharp stall points. I will take a side by side photo to compare them later tonight.
Stoked to hear you guys like the LBB! It was basically designed to fit the hands of the average N American, whereas the JKA-size is more geared towards Japanese school-kids, historically. Terra was the first brand to launch something like it, now there is the Tallboy, Flow model, Slaydawg, even the Musou is slightly larger (though the reason for this is a little different I guess). Ha, actually its sort of the opposite. The LBB is my normal Terra handturned shape scaled up, with a sliightly wider sarado for better lunars & slingers. There are some other design features, but the sarado is probably the biggest deviation in shape. The tallboy is kinda 'stretched out', its honestly one of the only midsized damas I don't really vibe with. (the 'stretched out' quote is straight from the guys who designed it). Stoked to see some more photos too! @Colin Hislop do you mind if I post that to instagram?
Ohh! I have yet to own a standard sized terra! But yes stretched out is a much better way to describe the tallboy I think. The wider sarado on the LBB is a necessity for sure, the tallboy sarado doesn't feel proportionate in my hands. By all means go ahead @htimSxelA!
The LBB I got in the summer from @htimSxelA is ridiculous. Fit's my hand perfectly. I have been dying for that size dama to become standard throughout the community.
I love mine and i'm pretty sure it's one of the first 10 dams i've owned and its still kicking today. (roughly two years later). How many LBB drops has there been now?
With the JKA slowly phasing out their competition sized kendamas (TK16, Shin Fuji), who knows! Maybe one day the KWC box will get just a Little Bit Bigger. Pun intended.
My first LBB came from the Terra 2 Year contest, late 2013 and I still am jamming that thing. So durable, and plays better every day. I want to say there have been four LBB drops (excluding event exclusive sales), but I could be wrong.
Okay here's the deep LBB breakdown: Everything that isn't beechwood is produced in Canada. We (Terra) source the wood for it, and cut the wood down to size for the machine shop that CNC-turns them for us. This lets us be picky about wood quality, and we can make some cool laminations (Terra pro mods coming soon!). We get the turned pieces back, and weight match the kens and sarados (heaviest->heaviest, lightest->lightest sorta deal), and then weight match the kens and tamas. Then, pack em up all nice and send them to their new homes! We also do some finishing work sometimes, more on that below. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Prototype batch was delivered to us by overnight FedEx, the day of the first MKO. It was 6 pieces I think... a purpleheart, a couple maple, a couple black walnut, and a mahogany. Rod, Eric, Rice, myself and Kristin each took one to jam, and the last one (one of the walnut I think) was kept fresh for reference / Terra museum. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ First run was launched for pre-order in... late November I think?, and then after some delays they were delivered just after the holiday season. Three different models were sold: - Maple natty (~55 pieces, if I remember correct these were available pre-order only) - Maple red Terra painted (~60 pieces) - Purpleheart with 70/30 split maple/purpleheart tama (~18 pieces) They're all numbered, in the format '1.x'. The first letter of the wood type is also engraved. Both engravings are hidden under the sarado. '1' refers to it being the first run 'x' is whatever number that kendama is (starting at 1 and counting up, for each different wood species) For the maple, the natty are 1.1 to 1.55 or so, and then the red painted are 1.56-1.116, though I might be off by one or two there There were also some other pieces made that we didn't sell: - 3 maple with a skinny centre stripe of purpleheart in the ken - 4 maples with black/yellow spectraply tamas (two horizontal striped, two vertical striped) - 1 maple with a blood wood stripe, and a double purpleheart stripe surrounding it that is pretty cool. One of each lives in the Terra museum, the rest went to the team or people who helped out with the project. (Probably a good time to give a BIG shoutout to Chris Mikulin of CLYW. Without his help the LBB project never would have happened. For real. That dude rules) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Second Run is some of the more recent 'LBB premium' stuff (basically, anything that isn't beech). We've had a couple releases from this batch so far, and similar to the first run, each piece is numbered '2.x'. Due to a mishap, the tama holes were cut a little smaller than the specification, so I actually mount them on the lathe in the Terra shop and cut the bevel wider by hand for each piece before we sell them. Rod re-bevel'd some of the maples, and then I took over from there, so I could keep QC as high as possible. We also put the curly maples back on the lathe and sanded them to a higher grit finish, so that the curly figuring would really shine. These finishing tasks eat up a lot of time, hence the reason the second run of LBBs has been released more slowly than the first. Some info on what's already dropped below: - Black walnut completes (13 pieces) - Purpleheart completes (12 pieces) - Maple completes (~15 pieces) - Curly maple completes (~50 pieces) - White ash completes (~50 pieces) Some stuff that is dropping within about a week or so! - Purpleheart completes (~10 pieces) - Purpleheart with Sourmash white beech tama (~10 pieces) - White oak with Sourmash striped beech tama (30 pieces, two colourways) There are also Pro Models for the team that will drop around the same time, about 30 pieces of each total were made, but some have already sold at events. 15-20 of each are left now I think. Aaaand we have some REALLY cool stuff coming after that, but I'm not gonna spill the beans quite yet. One is a collab that I know will be a huge hit, the others are some more obscure wood types we tried out in small quantities. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Beech LBBs are produced in Europe for us, and have been a go-to jammer of mine for a while. They're made to pretty much the same specs as the premium LBBs, but I honestly like the spike shape on the Euro production a little better (we changed it to a longer, but slightly less pointy shape). The beech aren't numbered, except for a few certain runs (I'm fairly sure some of the Terraflauge LBBs are numbered). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Okay... I think that about wraps it up! Shoutout to anyone who cares enough to have actually read all of this! Here's a few random discount codes for $10 off a beech LBB from the Terra Website, just cause Downspike is cool. Each is good for one use, first come first served! DOWNSPIKE1 DOWNSPIKE2 DOWNSPIKE3
I'll try to get a couple pics of the nicest looking ones as I'm packing them up, a few pieces have some pretty epic sarado grain.
Wow, thanks @htimSxelA for the lowdown on the LBBs, super interesting! Those white oaks look incredible!
LBBs are hands down the BEST kendamas ive ever played. perfect size for bigger players (im 6'2") i have a natty beech and the red painted first batch. love them both defiantly need to pick up that mash painted PH!!!!
the Vikings are bigger than the LBBs. for scale its standard kendamas, musous, sol flow, LBB/Tall Boy, viking, then jumbos from what ive noticed. sol flow and LBBs are almost the same but the flow is ever so slightly smaller but not by much
@Sbermea22 @Pyromawn - Here's a quick comparison pic I just snapped: L to R: Boss, Krom XL, Krom Viking, LBB, Flow, Musou, Mugen A Musou is just barely larger than normal, while a Flow is probably about 4-5% larger. LBB is about 10% larger, and viking is probably about 20-22%? I'm not sure about the XL exactly, but a boss is 150% normal size. I have a couple Krom XXLs and a couple Kusa/Krom XXXLs too, but they're a LOT bigger.