The new mugen musou groove just dropped today! They look pretty awesome and have plenty of features to make a lot of tricks easier to land. Personally I'm not a fan of beech wood so far so I not looking to buy one. Who's going to get one? And what do you like about the new design? https://www.iwata-mokko.jp/groove/ https://www.iwata-mokko.jp/en/item/
I am curious about the round bevel. Also, i have sanga kendama with bullet spike, and spiking is lot easier so it is another advantage of new musou.
Yeah I love how they kept the replaceable tip idea for that option. I've never got my hands on one of the previous musou but I heard that they are quite durable. I'm really wanna try one of these grooves and test out the groove idea they used on the serado and handle. It's seems like it would work very well for someone practicing new tricks. It will help them get the hang of catching the tama.
Replaceable tips is defintely a plus and those inlay designs on the top are awesome. I really like this design, brings new and old school elements into one ken. This is defintely one of my favorite kens of all time.
I never liked the plastic tips, so its cool they're offering both options. The engravings are interesting... not sure what I think about em. They're not the first engravings on a cup ridge, but they are the first that are specifically designed / marketed to be something that makes tricks easier. Is that different than putting a slayband on? What if the grooves went real deep, basically making a cup-like indent in the top of the cup? Hmm
I think I read @Steezdiaz doing something like this. He mentioned somewhere about adding teeth marks to grab at birds or something.
It's awesome you brought this up. I don't want to throw this thread off topic but just to say one of my first threads was about kendama mods and wether they are making it too easy for players to land tricks. If this idea of adding grooves catches on, it could change how this game is played. It's could become a basic feature that kendamas must have to compete in the market/competitions. Sorry if this is hard to read. I'm in a car with a reckless drive and am quite car sick but am trying to get this idea out there.
I don't think it is ever a problem to make tricks easier to land. I feel like sticky paint was once part of this exact same conversation. Whatever progresses the game.
When I first started playing, it was basically just JKA damas, so an ozora was the 'stickiest' around (it wasn't actually 'sticky' at all. Ozo premium paint didnt exist for a long time yet). Eventually people started custom painting, and it made things weird. Like, up until then, if I watched an edit, I knew there were 90% likely using an ozo or a mugen to film those tricks, so I could relate. Then all of a sudden, who knows what crazy paint is on the kendama they're using! It changed things up quite a bit.
I feel like paint is a little bit different than modifying the actual shape and design of the dama. There's gotta be a point where modifying takes it too far.
I never liked the plastic tips either but it sounds like some people do, so it's cool they offer both. What does it mean resin coated tip though? is the other one a wood tip with just a glossy paint job? or what
Yes, I actually did some experimenting with this. I found that the grooves that I created actually made it more slippery due to less friction and "touch points" for the tama. The angle at which they have the grooves at though looks promising though, I'd be up for trying it!
I actually own a Mugen Musou Groove with a resin coated tip, and I've been playing with it for a couple months now. Although the tama looks broken into, the spike of the ken still looks fresh like it came straight out of the box when I first opened it. With that being said I'm not so sure how it would hold up to a seasoned pro, but 2 months looking new is still pretty good to me compared to playing a regular Ozora, TK-16 or an OG Kaizen etc.