INTRODUCTION

What function and role does the cue play in your game?
Why are there so many different styles of cues?
What defines the value of a cue?
How do you choose the right cue for your game?
What can you do to improve the performance of your cue?

These are just a few of the many questions we will try to answer in this section, with the goal of preparing you mentally to consciously evaluate your choices and address your areas of concern with solutions appropriate to your game.

The cue is “just” the basic tool, transferring your game to the balls on the table. There are not magic cues. If your game sucks overall it will keep sucking whether you use a $20 house cue or a $2,000 one which comes with all the best technical features and looks like it comes from the Art Museum of New York.

With the more expensive cue, you will probably just throw in a few more balls as it may smooth down some of your mistakes. It will also make you look like a serious player with such a beautiful cue in your hands but that’s it!

If you really feel bad about your game and want to consistently improve to the best of your abilities, we suggest you read this section for your own information and then jump straight away to the services area of the site and coaching section. There you will find out how to improve the basics of your game to a point where the need for your own cue will surface already defined in its profile.

A good, custom fit cue does not make you a better player, but it will make you play better within your limits, and if you are committed to practice it will move up your personal learning curve

There is a tiny percentage of players that are so good and so experienced that even with a bamboo stick in their hands they will probably often leave you watching your 7 balls alone on the table at the end of the rack. You see some of these players in your bar too! For the rest of us, any help coming from anywhere is good, and the cue is probably the main source of help you can get.

And by the way, also for those “monsters” the bamboo stick is ok as long as they play with inferior players, but when they play with their peers then the rack is often decided by one single miss or a mistake in positioning (if not directly by the quality of the break). On these occasions even the best players can not count just on their personal experience gained through years of practice to prevail on a consistent basis, but even more than us medium players they need to have in their hands the best tool to transfer their game with the highest accuracy all the time.  

 

Let’s talk about the cue anatomy, parts and their influence on the game.

Cue construction can be split into two specific areas; Technical and Artistic. As we are here to improve our game we will concentrate primarily on the main technical areas first, as those are the ones qualifying a cue and its impact on your game.

The RED AREA components, those defining the cue quality and “character” of a cue, are Tip, Ferrule, Shaft and Joint.

 

back to top

13) The Tip

The tip is the ultimate component. It transfers the style and strength of your game, to the cue ball. It is the last bridge between your game and the result of your shot.

The tip is one of the most critical components of a cue. A $250 cue with a good tip plays better than a $2,000 cue with a bad quality tip, and it is something you must consider very carefully. The first gift you can make to your cue to improve its performance is, without any doubt, by putting a good tip on it! If it doesn’t have one yet, you will be surprised by the change.

There are a variety of types of tips on the market with prices starting for 50 cents up to $30 a piece. The best of the latest generation tips are the multilayered tips made by stacking and gluing multiple layers of animal skins and pressing them to various gauges to obtain different hardness. These are the most common types by hardness:

Soft/Slow – as per its name are the softer, less pressed type.

Advantages are they stay in contact longer (talking about fractions of second) with the cue ball giving more control, increasing the effect transfer (English) and reducing the vibrations running through the cue when you hit the ball. It also holds the chalk better and does not need to be chalked too frequently.

Disadvantages, they have the tendency of deforming more than the others types, therefore they need more frequent maintenance to be kept in shape and it absorbs some of the power you put in the shot. It is not a very common choice and is suggested for use by those players that like playing very soft, low power shots and who are willing to often work on their tip’s shaping, even during a single rack if needed.

Hard/Quick – Again by the name is and harder, more pressed type.

It is mostly used on breaking cues as its main quality is the power transfer rate, something essential in a break shot. Also they are used by a relatively small percentage of players for normal play (anyway more common than the soft type). The specific signature in normal play is to give a stiffer hit and as said more power transfer. The reduced contact time with the ball reduces the effect (English) transfer to the cue ball, which must be compensated by the power you put in the shot.

At the end, to get the final result you wish, you have to give a very precise shot, obtaining most of the effect by controlling higher power transferred to a very precise spot of the cue ball. If you come from snooker or play most of your shots from the center section of the cue ball up, you may find yourself comfortable with it, but if you play many shots below the center section of the cue ball with effect (English), well, you must be a hell of a player or you will often find balls going everywhere on the table.

Another Disadvantage is that it does not hold chalk well, so you will have to be sure to chalk it after every single shot. Because of the hardness, the tip keeps the shape pretty well and the need for maintenance is less frequent.

Medium – Is by far the most common choice by players of any level worldwide. We would say 80% of the players worldwide, adopt a medium hardness tip for their game.

All the characteristics described for the previous two types are present in the medium tips in a balanced manner; contact time with the ball, power transfer and effect transfer. These tips hold the chalk well (as a habit it is recommended to chalk after every shot) and require little maintenance. From time to time inspect the tip to ensure the shape is uniform. While the soft and hard types are very specific tools dedicated to specific uses or peculiar playing styles, the mediums are good all-around tools that will help you in most playing situations.

Tips on The Tip

All of the above is valid for good quality tips. The difference in price between a medium quality tip (talking of a 6$ type, forget about the 0-3 $ crap) and a superior quality tip is in the order of 10-15 $, a double fold in price sounds a lot in comparison, but do not let yourself get troubled by these small differences. As we said at the beginning the tip is a defining tool for the performance of your cue and a 20$ investment compared to the value of your cue (even a cheap one) is not an excess compared to the improvement it can make to your game.

Best cue tips around:

Moori, the most famous and sought after, 10 layered tips, made in Japan in a small scale laboratory by a very eccentric Japanese guy, according to a process which secrets he defends with his own life. Nobody is allowed in there for any reason and the few workers he keeps have surely signed with blood a secrecy agreement.

Talisman, another good 10 layered tip made in Thailand by an American fellow. (http://www.talismanbilliards.com/Cuetips.asp)

Molavia, last kids on the block, again from Japan, 9 layered tips of which people who tried them say are very good. We haven’t tried them yet. They are the most expensive tips on the market at this time.
(http://www.molavia.com)

Thomas, 10 layered tip made in Taiwan based on the experience an trials of the most famed players of the island (and would say of the world), it plays very good and has a very similar feeling to Moori.

Want one of these on your cue? Just get to our service section and order your beer at your XPool affiliated Pub, it will come to you.

back to top

12) Ferrule

Basically, the ferrule is that little piece of plastic you see between the wood of the shaft and the tip.

The Ferrule is still one of the “red area” components as it is in charge of protecting the wood on top of the shaft while preserving the “hi-fi” transfer of energy from the shaft to the tip. Being in the same axis of the shaft it also has a say in how much your cue will deflect as it can preserve or interfere with the specific flexion of the shaft you have chosen, and as you will read later in the dedicated section it is really not something you want to mess with.

Another effect in which the ferrule’s quality is involved is minimizing vibration. The less vibrations you have the better it is for the cue and the result of your shot. So, at the end the ferrule can be defined as a “passive” but sensitive component to which we require to disturb as little as possible.

Best material for a ferrule? Real Elephant Ivory. The price of an ivory ferrule? 75$ installed.

Ok, nice to know, second best?

There are plenty of relatively inexpensive plastic polymers that have been developed in time to mimic as much as possible the performance of real ivory and they all do pretty well. Elforyn, Ivorine, Linen based, ABS, Melamine and others are all good and in the range of 5-10$. The main cost involved with the ferrule, is the installation process as it is not a cylinder glued on the top of the shaft as it looks, there is a threaded Tenon inside, so when you need to replace the ferrule you must first mill away the original to the Tenon and then install the new one, or if not possible cut the ferrule and the old Tenon, drill off the old Tenon part still inside the top of the shaft, install a new Tenon and then the new ferrule on it. Anyway, we are talking of a “surgery” in the range of 15-25$ overall including the ferrule.

Normally decent cues come with decent ferrules. You replace the ferrule just if you want a real ivory one or when the original cracks, as a cracked ferrule has a very bad influence on the performance of the cue. If you need the component changed, we can help you. See in the services section. We also have ivory ferrules if you are a high end perfectionist.

On the flip side of the coin, a cheap cue normally comes with a cheap tip and a cheap ferrule , made in some cheap non specific plastic material. It just adds to all the other bad features that will play against your game.

An addenda on ferrules for breaking cues; many of the latest good breaking cues are now coming out (as standard) with a one piece ferrule-tip polymeric assembly, to enhance the power generation and transfer. You may take a while to adapt to the different feeling but they are effective.

back to top

10-11) Shaft

The shaft can be defined as the heart and brain of your cue and this section of the tutorial is the most extensive of all, as we are dealing with the most important aspect of modern pool.

The shaft is the component which defines by in-large the technical quality of a cue and is the component you must dedicate the most attention to when you make your choices.

Different shaft features dramatically influence the overall performance of your cue and there are various shafts which are designed for different game styles, along the line of the tips, but a much more complex world.

The importance here is about wood quality , process and assembly techniques which all affect the main criteria of the evaluation of the performance of a shaft. These are deflection, power, vibration and durability (in time).

Deflection is the physical phenomena taking the object ball to follow a different trajectory when hit by the cue ball if you give it an effect (hit off the center) to obtain a specific positioning after the shot, compared to the trajectory the object ball would have taken if the cue ball was hit in the center.

The consequence of this physical issue is the adjustment you need to consider when aiming in preparation of a shot you plan to play with English, to obtain the same object ball’s trajectory you would have had with a center hit shot.

If you aim the contact point of the cue ball geometrically correctly to pocket an object ball by hitting the cue ball in the center and then apply an English effect you are probably going to miss the pocket.

Consider that the lower you hit the cue ball, the more the deflection is amplified and that the farther you hit the cue ball from the center, the more the deflection is amplified and the longer the shot the heavier is the deflection, the more powerful the shot the heavier is the deflection.

You try to put all these factors together and you will see it can be a considerable mess to calculate where and how strong you have to hit the evasive white ball to pocket your object ball and get a decent positioning for the next shot.

The more a shaft deflects, the bigger the adjustment you have to calculate in aiming when playing English, making these kinds of shots much more difficult to figure out and execute successfully.

The less a shaft deflects the smaller the adjustment you have to calculate when playing English, making the planning and execution of these critical shots easier.

How the shaft can counter deflection?

By properly flexing on its axis when hitting the cue ball, the more rigid the shaft the more ball deflection it causes.

Shafts families by construction:

1. One piece shafts, turned down starting from a square dowel of solid wood.
2. Linear Laminated shafts (i.e.Meucci), turned down starting from a square dowel made of many tiny flat sheets of woods laminated one to each other.
3. Radially laminated shafts (i.e.Predator), made by gluing triangular sections of wood as a pie then turned down to conical shape.

Which of these shaft families is the best?

Theoretically the best shaft is made starting from a solid very uniform square dowel of hard maple wood, expertly picked from hundreds of options by a guy who is very experienced in cue making and able to judge from the cue grain, color and sound which one of them can be turned into a shaft that will be powerful, consistent, give little deflection, and will not warp (deform) or degenerate in time even giving to it the minimum level of chemical treatment possible.
 This “picky” process is part of the Custom Cue Makers world and we will talk about them later. It is not thinkable for a big company to follow this procedure to source the volume of shafts they need to feed their mass production of cues.

So, what are the big companies doing to provide shafts for the tenths of thousands of cue you find in the market?

Low-end shafts - Some companies just source cheap maple wood, process it and call it a shaft. It will be inconsistent, deflecting, will vibrate, warp (deform) quickly, but is cheap and you get what you pay for. For other companies, more on the industrial side, the use of chemicals to treat low quality wood dowels that have irregular grain (source of inconsistency in the hit) and would bend after 2 months of play has benefited them in profit but not the players. These shafts are extremely rigid, increase deflection and vibrations. Anyway, you will mostly find these shafts on cheap cues (sometime also on not so cheap, look out!) and therefore, we reiterate, you pay for what you get. There is a wave of incredibly cheap Chinese cues made with this process and assembled with butts painted or CNC inlayed to look like first class cues. They are far from that. Not all the cues made in China are that bad. You just need to understand what you buy.

Low-medium quality shafts - Some companies are willing to invest a little more and get minimum acceptable quality wood dowels and with a reasonable but still considerable treatment they improve the physical qualities and durability in time, the so called medium-low level brands, acceptable, neutral shafts. Lucasi, Fury, and how many others nobody knows (many famous brands are sure secretly in the list) are all made today in China by Tai Can Ltd, a real colossus in contract production of cues according to reasonable quality criteria. The factory is run by ex big western companies’ managers that grant an eye on quality matters, but also this sub-family of shafts is not what we are looking for to really impact our game.

Premium shafts - There are a few high-end cue brands which fill a niche between custom cue makers and industrial cue companies, their production volume is considerable but still allows them to get high quality selected shafts that need little treatment to stabilize. Even if the result is not as “pure” as a hand picked dowel they are ok, but these companies are making shafts just for their own cues.

Specialty shafts - This is the main ground of two companies that came out with the right technologies and grew to be the leaders (in sales volume, not in quality) of the high end cues’ market, generating the two lines of shafts that are ruling today’s high technical demand market:

Predator with the 314 and Z series of radial laminated shafts (www.predatorcues.com/predator_cues_shafts.html )

Meucci with its last evolution of Black Dot linear laminated shafts
(www.meuccicues.com )

At Predator they have always declared themselves as the “king of low deflection shafts” and thanks to very good marketing and millions spent in sponsorships of major pro-players they have granted themselves a wide market leadership. It is true, their shafts are well made and far less deflective compared to a medium quality solid wood shaft. Quite recently an American colleague made me pay a visit to the Meucci web-site and watch the unforgiving video clips Bob Meucci has put together testing and comparing on a reliable and objective “shooting machine” the most famed cues and shafts mixes, versus his last evolution Bull’s Eye Black Dot shaft.

We suggest you have a look and see for yourself following the Meucci link above. Click on the shaft animated picture in their home page and it will redirect to the clips series. Watch the introduction clip, and then the other comparative clips of your interest. It is a merciless and zero discussions clip series. If you are a Predator believer in low deflection terms prepare to be shocked and rocked by what you see. Black Dot deflects 130% less then a 314 shaft even if partnered with the same P2 Predator butt and 160% less than predator if assembled on a Meucci Power Piston butt. Let’s give to predator that their new 314-2 generation of shafts is improving deflection by an additional 5%, but even with that concession in mind we are still quite far apart in the final results. Probably the Z shaft of Predator will improve the gap (if only by a small step) but its small tip diameter is found difficult to play with overall by most players, so one step forward and one back in overall performance.

Deflection reduction wise the new Meucci Black Dot is the real king.

Despite the fact the Meucci’s Black Dot has proved to be far less deflecting then Predator we still give predator shafts a premium toward Meucci in overall feeling, playability and effect (English) transmission.

So, which one is the best? As usual it all depends on how you play and what are you looking for.

If you are a 9 ball style player (or want to become one) you will be hitting (most of the time) the cue ball in the lower section and with English to find the perfect after-shot positioning. Then, Meucci Black Dot is your shaft.

If you like playing a wide range of higher-lower shots with and without English, you can play with either Predator or Meucci shafts. With a Meucci you will find yourself better off when playing English but will have a slightly “harder” feeling when hitting the cue ball. If you like a more comfortable and smooth feeling when you hit the ball in any situation you may find yourself more comfortable with a Predator shaft.

You are a post-snooker player or most of the time hit the cue ball from center up? Then go for a predator shaft. You will always feel comfortable with your shaft and you do not need to trade comfort for extremely low deflection performance.

 

By the way, you do not need to buy a full high commercial brand cue to enjoy the benefits of their good shafts. These shafts are available (not really easily until now) with a large variety of customized joints to fit most of the cues on commerce. It means that you can buy some of the best shafts to be used with your present cue and dramatically improve its performance for a fraction of the investment needed to get a brand new cue.

Good shafts can still cost more than a cheap cue, but even the cheap cue with the right shaft plays almost like a high-end cue, so it makes sense anyway.

In our Services section you will find more information about how we can help you with this.

Shaft tip diameter- Shafts can easily be finished and customized at no cost with different tip diameters, ranging from 11.5 mm to 14 mm. Much too often you hear people saying a smaller tip diameter helps in general in shot precision. This is only true for expert caliber players.

The basic principle is that the reduced diameter of the tip decreases the surface of the cue ball we hit. The consequence is an exponential overall reduction of the tolerance toward our human imprecision. This means that if you use a shaft with a small tip diameter (11.5 to 12.5) you will increase your precision just as if you are able to consistently hit with extreme precision the exact intended spot of the cue ball, or, in more practical terms, if you are already a very good player. If you are not (yet) the small tip will accentuate the opposite and increase the imprecision of your shots, concentrating the “error” in a more specific spot.

The longer, and or more powerful, and or with more effect the shot, the more the error will be amplified. This principle is less evident in shorter shots as the errors’ amplification is reduced.

A bigger diameter shaft will hit a larger spot of the cue ball “distributing” the error on a wider area reducing its influence on the shot result, especially in long, powerful and effect-full ones. Of course there is an upper limit for the diameter of the tip beyond which the hit spot is too large and can not transfer precisely the wanted input to the ball.

This is the reason why 90% of the shafts on the market have a tip diameter between 12.75 mm and 13 mm, because that has proved to be the range that provides the best balance between precision and tolerance.

13.5 mm to 14.5 mm shafts are mainly used for breaking cues, and this just confirms the principles above. The breaking shot is supposed to be a very powerful and full effect, so it is naturally more difficult to control during the execution the precise spot you hit, a bigger diameter tip decreases the natural bigger natural error coming from the nature of the shot itself.

If you are a very (really very) good, precise and consistent player the smaller diameter shaft will help you in taking further steps in your level of play. If you are a medium player the smaller shaft will make your life more difficult and you will miss in percentage many more long and or complex shots. Unfortunately, those critical shots often make the difference in winning or losing a rack. You may feel slightly more comfortable having a smaller tip with short distance, low power, little effect shots but friends, you are supposed to execute those properly even with the bamboo stick, aren’t you?

So, according to your level of play, choose the size that can help you increase your precision.

Shaft taper - In the last 10 years it has become common practice to have the higher end shafts “pro-tapered”. The traditional shafts are tapered with a regular conical shape from their butt to the ferrule. Cheap cues still have this shaft shape.

Most of the modern and higher quality shafts have a pro-taper, which means a uniform diameter section from the ferrule down 12-15 inches. At the end of the pro-taper there is a conical, stiffer angle section going to the butt of the shaft. What is the pro-taper for? Simply to make a uniform diameter through the section of the shaft that normally slides on or between your fingers bridge when executing a shot, to fix and control the tip’s movement on a straight axis.

If you figure a conical section sliding on a fix point (your bridge) you can understand how the increasingly bigger diameter section starting right below the ferrule gives room for a position of the tip off the intended axis when hitting the ball, therefore increasing the risk of hitting the cue ball not exactly in the intended position. This is something you really do not wish to happen. Make sure the shaft you buy has it, as many cheap cues don’t.

A mention is due regarding the “New Generation Shafts”. The latest and newest technologies implemented in cue shaft development are more part of the industrial “engineering” world than the craftsmanship concepts which we described in the previous sections.

We will not consider graphite, kevlar and similar products as they have nothing to do with pool. We use a lot of graphite in our fishing and squash gear as its relatively lightness-strength-power compensates the loss of sensitivity in those applications but since we don’t need a 5 oz. cue for playing pool. Despite most of the Graphite-Kevlar cues being cored with wood, they are extremely rigid which equals greater deflection and high vibration. If you don’t intend to have a secondary use for your cue as a small, light, strong, handy and anonymous defensive weapon to keep in your car, well, we don’t see any other possible advantage in them.

There are a few possibilities in the market which are reported to have a nice playability, but still have a deflection greater then Meucci and Predator, namely.

OB 1 - It is part of the radial laminated family. Instead of starting from triangular dowels of wood, like with a Predator, these are starting from very particularly shaped lists and cored with foam to reduce vibrations. You can get to know them at www.obcues.com . I have read that a lot of people are using them and are satisfied. We haven’t tried one yet.

McDermott Intimidator shafts series www.mcdermottcue.com/IShaftHome.asp . I’m a full-wood fan but must say these cored shafts are quite good. They come in three types, red (mostly) for breaking, green for medium style play and blue for very “soft hitters”. These hafts are quite expensive too.

Cuetec Tru Glide SST shafts, here we enter the real new-tech world where there are more plastic polymers and various fibers in these shafts than wood. They are made of a mix of “materials” engineered to produce decent playing pool cues without having to think of selecting woods. At least they are not trying to fool people calling theirs “wooden shafts” as others do. We tried them and if we had to choose between some cheap low end crap wood shafts and these, we would take these. They are relatively cheap, don’t warp (deform), they “clone” the playing characteristics of a wood shaft and being coated with a plastic polymer layer they always slide well on the bridge without need of much maintenance. They are nothing to compare with a Predator or Meucci or a good solid wood shaft, but they will do if you just picked up a cue to start playing. If you don’t have big expectations or really don’t want to invest money in a good wooden cue, they could make a decent “entry level cue” with their own butt. We have some available in our Pro Corner.

back to top

8-9) Joints

The joint too, has a high impact on the overall performance of the cue, and reflects particularly on the cues character. It is not as important as the shaft and the tip but still it’s one of the “Red Area” components.

According to types and materials, it can contribute to making the cue stiffer (more powerful but more deflecting) or softer (more flexible and less deflecting).

The joint is composed of the male part called “pin”, with few exceptions installed at the butt’s top, it can be made of steel (most), brass (few) or a brand new material called G-10, almost the same material as what the pool balls are made of. It is adopted just for flat joints.

The female part of the joint is installed (tapped) in the shaft’s butt. You then have butt’s and shaft’s joint collars with the function of reinforcing the wood sections weakened by the holes and taps that must be drilled to accommodate respectively pin and female joint.

The collar of the butt can be either in metallic or plastic material. The collar of the shaft is always plastic polymers.

Joints are divided in two main families, Flat Faced joints, and Piloted joints.

Flat Faced joints are those where the butt’s top and shaft’s bottom meet as flat surfaces when screwed together. You have a pin directly tapped in the center of the butt top, reinforced by a plastic or metallic collar that can be of various thickness. The Female joint can be just a tap (female screw) carved in the wood of the shaft’s bottom or done by installing inside the shaft bottom a brass insert with a female screw of the size of the pin to match. The flat joint is granting a more “natural” connection between butt and shaft. It makes the overall cue softer, more flexible and therefore less deflecting, also reducing vibration.

The “disadvantage” is that flat joints need longer pins, so it takes a bit more care and time to properly assemble and disassemble the cue. The flat joint types are defined by the diameter (in inches) of the pin and by the number of threads per inch. For example a classic 3/8-10 flat joint means that the pin has a diameter of 3/8 of an inch and has 10 threads per inch. Smaller diameter and high number of threads per inch pins are used with inserts. Bigger diameter pins with fewer threads per inch are used for joints straight to wood.

     

    Radial Joint                5/16-18 joint with inser

Piloted joints are those where in the shaft’s bottom, a brass insert is tapped. Protruding from the shaft bottom, that protuberance is matching a connection in the male joint when screwed together, to increase the contact parts and make the joint more “solid”. They normally have shorter, small diameter pins.

The piloted joint is more rigid, increasing the stiffness of the cue, increasing its power but also the deflection. The main advantage of the piloted joints is that most of them are the so called “quick release” designs, which makes it simple and fast to assemble and disassemble the cue, That is the main reason they have been designed for by the big companies adopting them, to be “user-friendly”, but this friendliness has a cost in playability. Various types of piloted joints are available, most famed is the Uni Loc installed on all Predator cues and Lucasi, but there are others often taking the name by the companies that invented them.

   UniLoc Joint

The only piloted joint, not quick release, is the 5/16-14 adopted by Schon, Balabushka, Adams within the famous brands, and others. It takes the same time and care of a Flat Faced type to assemble and disassemble and it has been implemented right to increase the overall stiffness of the cue, as that was the target they had in mind.

  

             5/16-14 Piloted joint

What type of joint is the best? As usual depends on what are you looking for, as for all the other “red-area” components.

Let’s say that if you pay attention to most pool competitions broadcasted on TV, you can note the majority of players use cues (all customized despite the brand they may have printed on for sponsorship purposes) which have white or black plastic collars, some Ivory, which means they are Flat Faced joints.

The latest 9 Ball world champion Darryl Peach plays with a Predator with the standard Uni Loc piloted joint but as he said he’s coming from a Snooker background so cue stiffness is what he grew with and even changing to 9 Ball he can’t change the character of his game. So, it’s again all about the “right tools for the specific player” principle, always present in our tutorial.

If you are looking for low deflection, solid but soft feeling and low vibrations the Flat Faced joint is the one for you and possibly of those where the pin screws-in directly in a tap carved in the wood of the shaft such as the 3/8-10, 3/8-11 and 3/8-6 (Radial) types.

With these you will have to take more care assembling and disassembling your cue. You find these joints in most custom cues. A flat joint with an internal brass insert in the shaft, like the 5/16-18 adopted by Meucci, is still good, making the joint less sensitive to proper assembling. Meucci adopted it as they wanted to supply a flexible low deflecting cue but having to deal with a wide market made by players of all levels, they needed to avoid the less careful subjects damaging too many joints, to be then repaired under guarantee. The cream of the crop is the, recently available on the market, G-10 pin, made with a material very similar to that used for pool balls. It is the one giving the most natural feel and lowest vibration. It is available in 3/8-10 and Radial types, more expensive then brass and steel but we are moving them in numbers that are still relatively low. However, the performance is worth the cost.

If you really want the best of the best in this category, a section of real elephant ivory implanted on the top of the butt and a pin (G-10 at this point) tapped through it into the butt’s wood would be the “Top” of the flat joints.

Unfortunately an Ivory joint installed comes with a price tag in the range of $150. Even if it is the best, it is only available in custom cues.

If you are looking for stiffness and power increase and not worrying much about increased deflection, a piloted joint of any kind should be your choice. If you are not willing to pay much attention and spend time assembling and disassembling your cue, with no particular care about the advantages of a Flat Faced joint, piloted quick release joint types are the answer.

When you are done playing for the night and maybe not sober enough to pay proper attention to (or even being able to disassemble) your cue without damaging your Flat Faced joint, quick releases can give you a hand (may be with this last one we are going a bit too far in customization thoughts for cues’).

An unusual confirmation of these concepts is Predator. They have adopted for a long time the Uni Loc quick release joint. Years ago they came out with a patented system for their butts called C4.

Scope of the C4 system? Vibration reduction and butt flexion increase, as vibrations and stiffness were the few criticisms they had from the market and many pro-players they sponsor (www.predatorcues.com/predator_cues_c4_demo.html ).

Of course they will never say that C4 was the answer to a problem. It was just presented as one of the classic “technological breakthroughs” of the market leader. If their cues were made with proper woods (as they are) and assembled with a Flat Faced joint they would not have vibrated that much and not been that stiff, by nature but Uni Loc friendliness was too big a marketing tool to get rid of.

Anyway, that’s why at Predator they are so good. With C4 they still have extremely friendly Uni Loc quick release joints that many like so much and they compensated the disadvantages coming from a Piloted Joint by implementing a complicated system in the butt. This overall makes the cue very good but even more expensive to make. The best thing about this story for Predator is, we are happily paying for that “advantage”.

 

back to top

1,2,3,4,5,6) Butt

With the butt we are exiting the Red Area of components that have the most influence on a cue performance.

It is important to have a properly built butt but it is far easier to make a decent, honest performing butt than a shaft. It is less technically sensible, for the simplest of reasons. It is far away from the tip.

A shot is a fraction of second contact between the cue and the cue ball, the extremely limited passage of time in which everything happens, amplifies enormously the importance of the reaction of those parts of the cue nearer to the “event”, in sequence Tip, Ferrule, Shaft, Joint. The physical reactions running through them are, yes reaching the butt, but in a reduced manner.

What is required for the Joint-Butt section is not to interfere, follow and facilitate the action of the more critical parts of the cue.

Despite being not such a critical part from the technical point of view, the butt is contributing most to the price of a cue when individual cue prices begin to escalate.

We have two areas in fact to talk about regarding the butt. There is the technical area, which is pretty simple and the artistic area, where we will enter a field that has very little relation with the way the cue performs. It is more about vanity and or the pleasure coming from owning something beautiful and precious.

Technical features of the Butt

Pos 6) Forearm, not much to say from technical point of view.

Pos 5) Handle, important!! As it is where we grab the cue. It can be just exposed plain wood, wrapped with linen or wrapped with leather. It is all a matter of personal feeling and comfort. Some say the plain wood handle gives the best feeling, which is true, but if your hand sweats a bit, using a wooden handle will feel uncomfortable.

The hand should almost slide on the handle in the finishing phase of a shot, so check your sweaty palms before picking a wooden butt with no wrap!

Linen wraps are the most common as they provide the right amount of grip whether your hand is sweating or not.

Leather wraps are something between the two, with a big component of “artistic” side. Some love the feeling and others don’t. Just care of the level of sweating of your hands when you are playing (to exclude or not a wooden handle), ‘grab’ then the different styles and see which one you feel better with.

Pos 3) Inner weight bolt, important!! Many cues have interchangeable weight bolts inside the butt to allow changing the overall weight of the cue according to personal comfort.

Remember to take into consideration that different bolts weights change the overall balance of your cue, which should rest in between 15 ½ and 21 inches from the end of the butt cap of your standard length cue. The more weight you add with bolts, the further the balance of the cue is moving backwards.

In any case, it is better to have the balance slightly backward than too forward, as too forward moves the weight of the cue toward the shaft interfering with good control.

Very good custom cues do not have weight bolts just because the “master” designs and builds them tailored to your specific requirements using exactly the weight you want and the balance point exactly in the position you ask for, without bolts.

Pos 2) Butt Sleeve, nothing technical, all design, as long as it is in decent wood.

Pos 1) Butt Cap and Rubber Bump, also here, there is not to much technique. The Cap is made of the same plastic polymers as the ferrule, or in Ivory in the most expansive cues, without any implication on performance. The cap finishes the cue and the rubber bump avoids to damage the Cap when you rest the cue in a vertical position.

Just for you to know, Forearm, Handle and Sleeve can be worked in a single dowel of wood, but in many good cues are three separated components connected by internal wooden joints. Single piece wood butts are more flexible (as long as they are made with good woods) compared to multi-components butts. Then there are the “full spliced butts”, where two sections of different woods are cut and jointed together to create “spliced decorative points”. They are as rigid if not more than the multiple components butts.

 

 

back to top

Artistic and commercial side of a cue

Let’s say for $250 you can get access to a decent cue with a normal, decent shaft, if you know what you are buying (in this price range many cues really worth not even 1/3 of what they sell for, but boy, they look good). For $350 there is more value for money, where the player can have a good cue with a branded specialty shaft on it. For around $500 you can have a cue with all the best components available.

So, why on earth you see cues going above that and up to the thousands of dollars range? There are two plausible reasons:-

1) Prestigious woods and artistic inlay work implemented in the cue butt, referencing production cues.

Access the Predator web site and see the 5K series and the latest Black series you go from a retail price of $554 of a 5K1, to the $1,244 of a 5K8, to the $1,374 of a Black #4. The technical difference between the cheapest and the most expensive: Zero. They all play in the same way, what changes is just the level of complexity of the inlay work in their butt, and the butt cap in steel for the Blacks.

A due appendix on the P2 models of Predator which are instead, simply designed but really expensive because the butt is also made by 10 radial laminated parts as the shafts. It has the advantage of being more flexible, and has a smaller Uni Loc joint with less plastic in the shaft’s collar. It is the best overall technical cue series made by Predator. There you pay for technical solutions. A pity just because with flat joint cues you can get the same results for half the price.

Access the Meucci web site and you find the Power Piston series (the highest performance) which goes from $490 of the PP1 to the $850 of a PP4 or a Gambler 3 (that is also made on same PP technology). Also here zero technical differences, just different complexity of butt inlay design.

Same concept applies to all the other cue brands. Would you say at this point that the guy buying the more expensive model is stupid? Not at all. Wooden cues are artwork too, and their beauty makes many of us feel better, so why not? We behave the same way in many other aspects of our lives, from clothing to cars and so on.

2) You are looking at a custom cue.

In these cues the difference in price is also given by the different woods and inlay levels, plus, instead of being made by CNC robotic machines they are made on small machines by hand, one by one by guys that know everything about a cue and can put in them attention and care in detail (both technically and artistically) out of reach of mass production.

Even within the Custom Cue Makers there are levels and categories. There are the famed small size companies making a few hundred cues a year. Then there are the most famous guys working on their own, making tens of cues per year, with an overall commercial value equal to the hundreds of cues made by the small companies.

Here we are talking about art more than pool, you can order a portrait to the University Of Fine Arts and you will get something nice and made just for you, or you can order it from a famed contemporary master painter and you will pay for his genius, but will also get something unique to hang on your wall that will probably increase its value with time.

The same precise concepts apply to a Custom cue. If you become very good and expert in this game you will be able to “pick the university student that will become a famed painter” and there you hit the Jackpot buying some of his early creations.

There is also a flood of minor custom cue makers, some just trying to put up an alternative business to make a few more bucks for themselves. Some are on the development path. These are also “university students” and you must be able to evaluate their work if you want to approach them.

Bottom Line - understand what you buy and pay and never trade technical quality for aesthetic look. Reach your technical target first with your investment, and if you have something left add to it a touch of pleasure.

back to top

GUIDE TO CUES BRANDS

We have chosen some of the best and most representative brands per category, according to our knowledge and taste, just for you to look around. The full line-up is too wide to mention them all, especially in the low and medium levels. Anyway, if you have read the Cue Tutorial you have a clue of how to judge brands which were not mentioned here.

Mass cue production companies.

Lucasi, American brand, nicely made in China for several years. Nice CNC butts, a bit rigid, they use mostly Uni Loc Joints (for the amateurs of the quick locks). They range from $100, to $350 all according to butt inlay design (also made by CNC computerized machines), all models have the same poor original shafts, but if you get the cue and buy a good shaft for it, it can be a fairly good looking cue which performs well, for a limited investment.

The same Lucasi concepts and features (with different joint styles) apply to many other brands like Fury, Lycos.

We place in the higher section of this category also Cuetec, a particular cue of which we have spoken of already in our Shaft section

Medium quality cues production companies
Viking, McDermott, Viper are within the most famous. We picked one, McDermott, to develop a project called McDermott XPooled custom cues.  The reasons for this collaboration are the beautiful designs of their quality woods butts, the well made flat faced joint 3/8x10, the very good price / quality ratio. The ideal base for us to work on with customized shafts to create a line of hi-tech, not too expansive cues. Their original standard shaft is simply below our criteria.

Big Custom cues companies
Still working on an industrial base but according to the highest quality custom criteria allowed by their size. The biggest company producing custom-like cues and shafts is Schon  (www.schoncues.com). They are big but work in a very high-end and therefore numerically limited segment of the market, in fact Schon’s are called the “Cadillac of the cues”, nice expensive cues with very characteristic specific shafts and piloted joint, all made in the name of stiffness, for those who like them that way.  
Other names worth of mention are Joseph Pechauer (www.pechauer.com), the Adams-Helmstetter-Balabushka conglomerate in Japan ( www.theadamcueco.com ) and Mezz by Miki Ltd also in Japan.

Smaller custom cue companies
These companies normally employ few people and turn their cues on man (not CNC) controlled machines the old way. Jacoby (www.jacobycue.com), Samsara (www.samsaracues.com), Dale Perry (www.DPcues.com) or you can see Dale’s works in this site in the Pro Corner section. It has been a bit of a struggle at the beginning because of the distance and his diffidence toward Indonesia, but finally we got him to collaborate with us in this adventure and we sponsor his cues in the Xpool circle.

Master Cue Makers
We are humble enough to recognize when we reach one of our limits and this is too deep for us to comment on in the professional own-earned-knowledge based manner we tried to follow in this Tutorial so we will just give you a link of somebody that knows and has all the big shot Cue Makers on hand, where you can enjoy yourself viewing many of their creations. Should you get one out of our range please be fair enough to contact us for a chance to see the real thing. We would love to. http://www.cornerstonecustomcues.com/cues/newcues.html   

back to top

CUE PURCHASING GUIDE

The real and best guide to help you in making your choices is the whole Cue Tutorial, but for those with little time or those that do not have the will-power to read it all, we have provided a quick picture of what happens putting together all the information and concepts we passed to you, and relating them to the market options. It is useful to have a quick answer to the basic question. What should I buy?

Step one – Fix your target

Are you a beginner? Direct yourself to a good all-round cue. Don’t focus on very specific performing cues styles. It will take you 3-6 months to find out the way you feel and your style of play. At that time you can take further steps to cater specifically to your personal needs in a cue. As it may well happen that you will want to have something different, we suggest you to limit your budget to the essentials and buy a cue that you can easily resell without loosing to much of its value (if you take good care of it).

Are you a medium level pub league player with the will to improve? Then spend a night in some place where you can play a lot of frames (a pool room or friend’s house) and try to have a gross count of the percentages of shots you hit the cue ball above and below the center.

You hit mostly above, or you want to push your game in that direction? You may want a slightly stiffer cue, as Schon, Pechauer or Predator (more neutral) or others with a piloted joint and medium to stiff shaft.

You hit mostly below, or you want to push your game in that direction? Get a soft cue with a flat faced joint and a medium to soft shaft, as Meucci.

Are you a good player and want to further improve your game to top levels? If you change, go for the same concepts valid for a medium player but, as you know the game much better, be as specific as possible in the analysis of your game and select all those components helpful to push your game in the wanted direction and style. Best of all would be for you to have a custom cue designed on your game.

An alternative for medium and good players, keep your cue butt, if it is still in good condition and buy for it a customized high end shaft with a good tip. Get a Meucci if to be soft and low deflecting and Predator as best all-around.

Step two – Budget

Fix a budget you are willing/can afford to invest in your tool. When you do that remember you are not supposed to change your cue every month, even not every year. A couple of hundred dollars more invested are not as much as they feel like on the spot, if you see them invested in the long term and in a tool that can seriously help you to improve in your favorite hobby/sport.

There are three main budget areas:-

Keeping the artistic side of the cue to a minimum, and putting all on the technical side, the budget to have a brand new performing cue is around the $230-280 range.

With around $350-450 you can have quite a technical cue with a specialty shaft (even less with some Meucci models and our “XPooled McDermotts” if you are out for the soft-low deflection category).

For around $500 you can have a cue (even a custom cue) with all the best in it. The artistic side of the cue can take any of these three categories in the thousands of dollar range, but nothing will be added to your game if not making yourself feel more satisfied and confident.

If you are a beginner stay on the minimum or medium class, with an all round shaft. If you are a medium level, stay at least in the middle and if you are a good player stay in the medium or top class, if not it will be a replacement, not an improvement as it should.

If you decide to keep your cue and change its shaft with a specialty one you have to consider a cost of around $200. It is less then buying a low-medium level cue so if you are tight with money and you own a reasonable “piece of wood “ already, that undoubtedly is the way to go to take the next step in your game.

Step three – Take your pick

Enter any shop, real, or virtual on the net, see brands and models, ask questions and select the tools that will accompany you in your game according to the knowledge you have got. As per the slogan of a guy you will meet if you get our sponsored self training videos collection: “Knowledge Is Power”.

If you do not have knowledge you will be at the mercy of the shop keeper, who must sell what he’s got in his stock following often the more attractive commercial deals offered by the manufacturers than real technical choices. Or you may wander around shelves full of shiny cues making your choice based on their look or the brands you have most heard about. Those are the ones with more money to spend on advertising, not necessarily the best objectively, and nobody knows if they’re the best for you.

In our Pro-Corner we have tried to put together suggested selections based on explained concepts. Take a look and you may find what you are looking for without the need to scramble around too much.
  
We also created a nice exercise. According to the principles of the tutorial we realized a decently priced cue with all the best characteristics was not available on the main market so we designed one, trying to stay in a not cheap but affordable budget and commissioned it to a famed American Custom Cue Maker working in the Philippines. After a few prototypes we got to the final solution that you also will find in the Pro Corner, custom cues section. It is simply called “XQ”.