Sol Pioneers Kendama Review

Sol Kendamas has been around for a while and I have been fortunate enough to play their kendamas since 2014. Ever since Sol started with its first natty damas, the Sol brand has evolved with the industry and has built a prolific pro team in the making.

I met co-founder Chad Covington in Japan this year and managed to talk about the design process when making Sol kendamas. After getting a chance to review the Sol Vibe for Honed, today I will take a look at their new line of Sol Pioneers.

The Pioneers follow the Sol Shape, which is similar to the Vibe covered in my review so I will not go into too much detail about it. The only notable difference with the ken is the inclusion of a balance hole which has resulted in obvious improvements in lunar balance. It is a full maple kendama with sticky paint. The model from the Pioneers series I have today is the ‘Jules‘, which is based off a character designed by Ink Party.

It’s interesting too that all of the sol Pioneers come with their spikes pre-glued to protect them from wear. More on that later.

Compared to the Ozora, this kendama is clearly bigger. In fact it is one of the larger kendamas you will find in the market, bigger than Vivewood’s V1-3 shape sans their V4. You can also see how it compares to other shapes below. For consistency, we will compare to the Prime, Shift and BL Shape.

Note all text are in comparison, i.e. if the column/row says Prime, Cup, Bigger – that means in comparison to the Prime Cups, the reviewed kendama IS BIGGER.

Ken aside, this series features the all star bevel previously seen on the Lyndon or Liam pro models. This is the first time a mid range line of Sol Kendamas offers this bevel. The bevel is wide, but that’s not the key feature.

The key feature in the All-Star bevel is the inclusion of a steep gradient towards the inner bevel. This significantly improves the durability of the bevel as we do not see it flattening out over time. In addition to that, there is an improvement in stalls as it breaks in.

I must note however that this increased gradient with a wider outer bevel results in a wider inner bevel as well. Playability wise, this could cause it to drop out when going low for j-sticks. Despite this, it does not occur on this kendama due to the slightly fatter spike. The key point here is that the All-Star bevel may not work so well with kendamas that have slimmer spikes if you decide to mix and match.

The ken is simple, the standard Sol Kendamas logo burnt on the handle. The tama paired with this ken is also a 62mm tama.

The tama is also simply designed but with purpose. On first look, you see a natty scope, followed by a dark purple tracking line before a lighter purple main colour. It is finally topped off with a tama tracking dot.

Named Jules however, the tama design is inspired by a monster rendered by Ink Party. In collaboration with them, all 6 Sol Pioneers are designed after these monsters.

The tama is indeed more function than it is art, but the colors remain in good contrast and are aesthetically pleasing. This is my first time playing with a sticky Sol paint that wasn’t water transfer designed like the Lyndon mod. I personally enjoyed playing with it and it did not seem to lose tack very fast. In fact, I felt it retained its stickiness longer than the Lyndon mod before needing a wipe down.

As mentioned above, the spikes come glued. This is to prevent spike damage however that means with a stronger spike, tama dents will be more apparent during early stages of play. Gluing is done at a production level and therefore it is not possible to request a version that is not glued.

In the playability section, I test the smoothness and ease of landing tricks in the 4 criteria, Lunar, Stalls, Slings and Kenflips. A difficulty rating out of 10 (1 being easier than usual, 5 being no difference and 10 being much harder than usual) will be given to each category at discretion.

This one is interesting. The shape of the ken and balance hole makes it much easier to do lunars as I found myself landing them with ease. The All-Star bevel made birds, nightingales and most other stalls easy. However as with most kendamas, we have not found a way to best optimize the ringstall yet, so that was not significantly easier.

As for slingers, I generally find it easier to do them on a thinner sarado, but then you trade that ease off for a poorer lunar balance. Slingers are not harder to do with this ken, nor are they easier. I am a more lunar person however so this didn’t affect me too much. I found kenflips easier to do however, as the thicker base made it easy to flip the ken.

At $40 USD, this is a pricier kendama for its simple design. Sol offers free shipping in the USA so that makes it easier to digest for American consumers. This is a high quality yet standard kendama made by a small company that routinely makes an effort to support the kendama community.