something always rubbed me the wrong way about padding being somewhat tight around a shaft. Figure it can't be all that bad, everybody loves them but it does keep me from buying one.
Well, here’s how I see it. I’ve used tube style cases since forever, been in more pool halls than I care to count, have put my cases over the years through their paces, and never had an issue with a cue being damaged, not even close.
I bought a JB 4x8 a few years back for storage, as I loaded it I realized like you, everything was kind of tight, and way too close together. There seemed to be a friction when trying to remove butts or shafts from it, also you had to load it and unload it a “certain way” because of how tight it was. I contacted JB and they confirmed it should be loaded and unloaded a certain way.
It certainly offers protection, but too tight IMO. I noticed how much smaller the JB 4x8 was compared to a Whitten 4x8 I had at the time was. It feels like you’re cramming too much into too little a space. Now you’ll have the freak occurrence happen occasionally where it might prove handy, I remember a post here about a guy that dropped his JB from a moving motorcycle. So I guess it’s ok there, but how often has anyone’s regular hard cases been subjected to an incident that resulted in damaged cues?
