Older cubers discussions

pglewis said:
Are the Thunderclap springs stiffer or looser vs. the stock ones? Or is it something else that makes the swap an improvement?

Same with the inner layers on the 62mm Yuxin that arrived yesterday, but it's nowhere near as tight as the G4 was out of the box for me. The G4 took a couple days before any inner single slices wanted to happen at all and it has come along nicely while learning 4x4. I plan on doing a bunch of slow 2x2 solves on the Yuxin in the hopes that'll help work out the sluggishness. Also some uneven tensions on the Yuxin as shipped. Attempting to do a Uw on one of the faces moves the single innner slice while the U face barely moves. Currently the G4 beats the pants off it but I'm reserving judgement until break-in.
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That's exactly what happens to my Yuxin Blue 4x4. Trying to do a Uw only moves the inner layer and this only happens on one or two centers. As I just don't have time to tinker with my cubes any more I just left it in a drawer and kept solving my G4. Any advice on how to fix it? I might order those Thunderclap springs and plan it as a Christmas project to do the spring swap.

EDIT: I just checked and TheCubicle is out of stock of Thunderclap v1 springs. They seem to be so popular. Thinking about buying a full Thunderclap instead. To be honest, with shipping from thecubicle the spring set might cost the same as the full cube from Lightake and I can always put the Yuxin Blue springs on the cube and, well, have another spare cube to give to somebody (if it's not too terrible with the stiffer springs). What do you think?

EDIT 2: Also, checking cubezz, here they call it the thunderbolt, right?

EDIT 3: Yeah, it is the thunderbolt. Also in zcube they call it that. Another question. If I decided to try small multi (like 3-5 cubes at most) would it be recommended to buy 5 identical cubes? Would be the stickerless Thunderclap v1 a good choice? I have plenty of 3x3s so as to not really need to buy cubes for multi like... ever (got more than 20) but 5 Thunderclaps will not set me back a lot of money so... why not?

Sorry for the long post and lots of questions :)
 
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mafergut said:
That's exactly what happens to my Yuxin Blue 4x4. Trying to do a Uw only moves the inner layer and this only happens on one or two centers. As I just don't have time to tinker with my cubes any more I just left it in a drawer and kept solving my G4. Any advice on how to fix it?
Click to expand...

Tightening the screw on that side wasn't the answer. I could get it to almost stop doing it by loosening, but I feel like I've loosened that side to near dangerous levels to get it there. I'd be curious if anyone knows a fix or if it might go away with break-in.
 
muchacho said:
Yeah, thunderbolt, also called that at zcube... if you get a stickerless I'll buy you the remaining pieces in the next comp we are both in... if that happens before 2018 :D
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zcube has great volume discounts. I can get 6 there with shipping for less than 25 euro. Tempting. Regarding the comp I for sure will not go to one until at least 2017 but I hope I can someday have the experience of going to one. Hope to see you there ;)
 
mafergut said:
Another question. If I decided to try small multi (like 3-5 cubes at most) would it be recommended to buy 5 identical cubes? Would be the stickerless Thunderclap v1 a good choice? I have plenty of 3x3s so as to not really need to buy cubes for multi like... ever (got more than 20) but 5 Thunderclaps will not set me back a lot of money so... why not?
Click to expand...

My experience is limited but I'd say that it is good to have consistency when solving MBLD. Different cubes might give you a slight memo/recall advantage but I wouldn't like to have cubes that feel very different as it could be a distraction. @mark49152 has lots of Thunderclaps for MBLD. The stickerless ones are fine but personally I find the stickered ones easier for identifying pieces and the stickers give slightly better grip.
 
mafergut said:
If I decided to try small multi (like 3-5 cubes at most) would it be recommended to buy 5 identical cubes? Would be the stickerless Thunderclap v1 a good choice? I have plenty of 3x3s so as to not really need to buy cubes for multi like... ever (got more than 20) but 5 Thunderclaps will not set me back a lot of money so... why not?
Click to expand...
I bought 3 Thunderclaps at a local competition last year as I wanted to use them for blind and F2L training and I pulled off the appropriate stickers off of each. Truthfully the F2L one was the only one I ended up using for a while. I don't really like the Thunderclap though so I don't really use them much. Having said that though Chris Olson swore by one for a long time and I have heard a lot of people like them. Perhaps if you like the Meiying, just not as fast. But as a good budget cube it's a winner.
 
pglewis said:
Tightening the screw on that side wasn't the answer. I could get it to almost stop doing it by loosening, but I feel like I've loosened that side to near dangerous levels to get it there. I'd be curious if anyone knows a fix or if it might go away with break-in.
Click to expand...

I definitely had it too loose. The center piece that the screw sits in got out out of alignment, ending up with the middle layer catch issue. It's keyed to mate with the core only one way so I had to bite the bullet, take the screw out, and open it up. I successfully managed to remove just that layer and get it reassembled without too much cussing and now the wide turns seem to work okay. The outer layers on two sides still slip the slightest bit on wide turns but not like before where it barely turned on the one side.
 
Also, @newtonbase: I'm actually pleasantly surprised with the Mars now. I've tightened the stock tensions a full 1 3/4 turn and the catchiness seems to be mostly gone. I lubed the core and pieces with Lubicle standard after I got it, and gave it two drops of Lubicle Silk earlier tonight. It's actually feeling kind of fun on my slow solves tonight.
 
pglewis said:
Also, @newtonbase: I'm actually pleasantly surprised with the Mars now. I've tightened the stock tensions a full 1 3/4 turn and the catchiness seems to be mostly gone. I lubed the core and pieces with Lubicle standard after I got it, and gave it two drops of Lubicle Silk earlier tonight. It's actually feeling kind of fun on my slow solves tonight.
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If I ever get any free time I'll have to have a play with it.
 
Logiqx said:
I've uploaded my PLL algs including breakdowns if anyone is interested.

The link is in my signature.
Click to expand...

I've added / improved the descriptions which explain what most of my PLLs are doing. My breakdowns may be interesting to anyone into alg composition or wanting a basic understanding of how they work.

Some of the cases aren't described yet; namely the G's, R's, V and a couple of my OH algs. I haven't come up with a decent explanation for them yet.

J's are my favourites for easy understanding: http://cubing.mikeg.me.uk/algs/pll.html#letters_j

Click the images for the additional information.
 
Thank you all for the good feedback. I don't particularly love the Thunderclap either but it is nice enough for BLD, where I won't be pushing maximum TPS and I think having all identical cubes is a benefit that compensates for that and can help me avoid execution errors caused by the change of turning feel between one cube and the next. I have done a few attempts with 2 cubes and that happened.

Regarding stickerless or stickered I am not really sure that I feel increased grip with stickered cubes but I will definitely think about it before purchasing anything. Also I had never heard about better identification of "stickers" during memo on stickered cubes vs stickerless but that would be an important argument. Any other opinions on that?
 
mafergut said:
Thank you all for the good feedback. I don't particularly love the Thunderclap either but it is nice enough for BLD, where I won't be pushing maximum TPS and I think having all identical cubes is a benefit that compensates for that and can help me avoid execution errors caused by the change of turning feel between one cube and the next. I have done a few attempts with 2 cubes and that happened.

Regarding stickerless or stickered I am not really sure that I feel increased grip with stickered cubes but I will definitely think about it before purchasing anything. Also I had never heard about better identification of "stickers" during memo on stickered cubes vs stickerless but that would be an important argument. Any other opinions on that?
Click to expand...

It's just my personal opinion, but I feel more at ease with stickered cubes regarding recognition and I think in blind events it's as important as in speedsolving events.
Also I don't think the change in feel with different cubes has a huge impact unless some of the cubes are significantly less stable. So ordering a bunch of Thunderclaps is probably a good idea. ^^
 
sqAree said:
It's just my personal opinion, but I feel more at ease with stickered cubes regarding recognition and I think in blind events it's as important as in speedsolving events.
Also I don't think the change in feel with different cubes has a huge impact unless some of the cubes are significantly less stable. So ordering a bunch of Thunderclaps is probably a good idea. ^^
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Thanks! I don't have much of a problem with stickerless cubes regarding recognition. All my big cubes are stickerless and also my main 2x2. My 1st stickerless 3x3 (except for a Zhanchi log ago) is the Valk and I have not had any issues adapting to it coming from all back plastic stickered ones. Do you think 3BLD is any different to speedsolving in that regard? Because, in that case I'd go with stickerless, just to avoid the hassle of ever having to re-sticker 5 cubes... or more, if I ever get into MBLD to the point of needing more than 5.
 
mafergut said:
Thanks! I don't have much of a problem with stickerless cubes regarding recognition. All my big cubes are stickerless and also my main 2x2. My 1st stickerless 3x3 (except for a Zhanchi log ago) is the Valk and I have not had any issues adapting to it coming from all back plastic stickered ones. Do you think 3BLD is any different to speedsolving in that regard? Because, in that case I'd go with stickerless, just to avoid the hassle of ever having to re-sticker 5 cubes... or more, if I ever get into MBLD to the point of needing more than 5.
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Hm, consider that MBLD cubes are probably much less frequently used, so the stickers will be intact for a very long time.
Apart from that I don't think BLD events are different in that regard, at least when you know your color scheme well enough. I'm not an expert on BLD solving though.
 
mafergut said:
Also I had never heard about better identification of "stickers" during memo on stickered cubes vs stickerless but that would be an important argument. Any other opinions on that?
Click to expand...

I think it's up if you used to use stickerless cubes. For me - no difference when I used to stickerless valks 3: same memo time and same execution.
 
Fair enough. Then the only issue is, anybody has a stickerless Thunderclap v1 and can give an opinion about the shades? If they are good I'd get stickerless cubes and use my current stickered one for the yuxin blue spring swap. If they're not good enough, @sqAree is right that I'm not going to wear the stickers that much so as to be worried about this... and I'd have 1 cube less to buy even if we're just talking about 2.81 euro. Nah, whatever, I still think 2.81 is a nice price for the springs :)
 
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