when making your own "perfect setup" what do you look for? do you try and match you tama and ken in weight? maybe prefer one alot heavier than the other? hard or soft woods? cushion or natty? new to the community and would like to know peoples choices and what lead them there. Thanks for your time guys.
I always look for a match in ken and tama weights, usually on the heavier side. I also usually go natty so that's where I begin looking but sometimes I get a painted or cushion, it all depends on what I plan to do with that particular ken. My "perfect" ken right now is the Japenese Maple Ozora with a speed string. I usually like to keep the tama with the ken it is made for.
I generally love to get good audible feedback from the setup, so woods that have crisp clacks like maple and yaki are a favorite. I try to keep the sarado and ken within +-2g of each other, and the two should roughly be within +-2g of the tama as well. My ideal weight is in the mid to late 70s, for a JKA sized kendama.
Weight and playability, with a little bit of looks factored in. Weights because I like to do the occasional spacewalk trick and I'd rather not have it flying everywhere due to bad rotation. Playability because I like it to play well together lol. Looks because I wouldn't put a green ball on a purple ken ya know?
I like to use certain paints such as pro clear and silk, have a heavier sarado, a tama that's slightly heavier than the overall ken, and just overall lunar balance. Like @Nick Lectura said, looks are kind of what I look out for because sometimes, there are certain colors that don't go together well for me. For example, I wouldn't use a purple tama on a red ken or a pink ken with an orange tama.
no barney damas? I think a purp stodd with a booger tama would look unreal now that you mention it lol
I've never been one to weigh my damas, but I did weigh some of my kens at batb with someone else's scale and I've found that I like 75 grams with a slightly heavier tama. As for wood types, maple, always maple lol. Painted or natty wise, I don't really care which as long as the paint isn't too overwhelmingly tacky.
Weight-matched-ish, maybe +/- 8%, tama heavy preffered. Tama needs to be very round, natty is awesome but I'm down for painted as well. Stripes for hole-tracking are nice. Mid-sized preferred (LBB, craft +, etc) No walnut or wenge!
Can I lace teh bangarzz?? Then I like it. No but honestly I think I'm still figuring this out. Playability out of the box is nice I guess. I mean, I'm willing to fight to break something in over the long term, just haven't really done it yet to be honest. Goals.
That's funny I know what you mean about it feeling hollow. For me it's weird, it's like a unique attribute that makes it feel different than other woods that I'm used to. I like it but I totally can see it as a turn off too haha
I'm definitely diggin in maple kens right now. I agree with @htimSxelA round tama's are important. I have not gotten into fancy flying twirl in the air tricks, so weight matching isn't too important to me. I've just been sticking to my stock Kaizen2.0 maple.
Weight matching is pretty awesome but I would recommend starting off just playing around and don't switch around Tamas for a while. So you can figure out what you like.
maple, beech, birch and rubberwood are what i go for haha. i like my weights around 65-70g. i do like heavier stuff sometimes, mostly for spike tricks, but not for balance tricks
im rockin an 82 gram trip split tama from the co and a 74 gram shenzhu ken from the co too. never tried mixing or matching anything just played from the box.