Well, might as well stir the pot! If carbon shafts had came out for fifty bucks nobody would play with them. Marketed as high end shafts I suspect Predator in particular is stunned at how well they sell!
I have played with only two CF shafts. One was probably a prototype 11.8 REVO. That shaft is amazing. Good feel and feedback, I could happily play with it all the time if it fit my cue. The owner might be a little whiney if I stole it but that's life!(grin) Persuaded me to invest in a CF shaft and I bought the Cynergy. Mistake, I don't like it despite being another 11.8 CF shaft. Hit is on the dead side.
The one good thing about the CF shaft is that it is the same year around playing in South LA. My wood playing shaft warps and straightens every year. The warp is very slight and I have played with it a decade or so.
Wood, spliced wood, and CF are different beasts. I have a fondness for wood, not so much spliced wood. When I had my cue shop I bought a few gross of shaft blanks, a gross at a time. Less than ten percent of shafts were outstanding, about thirty percent usable for customers, another ten or fifteen percent usable for my own shafts. A good straight grain being more important than ring count. I had eight ring shafts that played fine. How they faired in a ping test was more important than ring count but ring count was a marketing thing and I didn't even try to sell less than twelve to fifteen ring count shafts. Above fifteen were premium shafts for special cues.
Good wood well maintained may still warp slightly. Only affect play if you let it get in your head. I still index for a few percent more consistent play. I think Predator is the one that found a good wooden shaft only had 3% difference regardless of how it was turned. A plain wood shaft has a sweet feel that I don't find in spliced wood. Thee main reason for splicing was because of all of the crappy shaft wood around a production shop. With a shaft with a lot of splices the glue lines supplement or replace the growth rings. Saves a lot of wood they couldn't market as a one piece shaft. I have a very hard time plunking down a premium price for a spliced shaft that is almost certainly partially salvaged wood. Some hit OK, some don't. I have only hit other people's, never hit with one I liked enough to run out and buy one.
A wood shaft can be stabilized. I tried that. Deadened the feel of the shaft. It is amazing how much of the stabilizer a shaft blank soaks up in a minute or less!
Carbon Fiber has taken over most sports and I am sure will largely take over pool too. I notice they have wood racquet tennis matches though so wood may survive to a decent degree. One of the best hitting cues to this day is a one piece house cue. The old masters weren't trying to build a better cue, just a cue that came close to the hit of a one piece full splice cue that had a joint in it to tote around. A wrap can be nice too.
End of the day it will be whatever cranks your tractor. Starting out, I would go with Carbon Fiber, one less variable to get used to. It plays the same however you turn it. I still find myself trying to index it, over fifty years of habit isn't going away easily. I enjoy leaving my case at home and sticking a BRAD tool and tiny piece of sandpaper or Scotchbrite in my pocket. Grab something off the wall, maybe tune it a little, and play. There is a feeling of freedom not toting that case full of stuff I don't use most of anyway.
While PIA is certainly a great player, she is relatively inexperienced starting play in 2016 if I understood her correctly. The Willard tool to abuse her tips with tells me a lot. I have two Willards in my case, all I use are the cutouts on the side to show people wanting a new tip what their actual tip radius is instead of what they think it is! I tried to keep my tip at a dime radius for a month once. In that time I completely ground down a nice layered tip!
CF seems like wood, a lot of variance possible. Some are very good, I suspect most are caca as far as feel. A thousand percent mark up is pretty sweet for the makers or marketers though.
Hu
