I know a lot of players don’t like the Valley bar box for many reasons. Some just don’t like 7’ tables period. But the #1 reason I hear is that they have big pockets, bad rails, and slow cloth. Now I’m not saying a Valley can be made into a Diamond Smart table with pro cut pockets, but it can be made to play pretty damn close to one for as little as $200-$300.
There are probably hundreds of thousands of these tables in the US and other countries. I believe if Valley table owners when it was time to change cloth would put one of the faster clothes on, get a set of Ridgeback rails (angles are cut different), and have the pockets tightened to 4 ½” that players would be surprised how close to a Diamond it plays. One other thing to check is the 8 bolts (2 each) under the corner castings. Most of the older tables will be found to have at least 1 or 2 bolts loose or some missing all together. Tightening these takes a lot of the Valley clunk out of the rails. With the Ridgeback rails there is no more clunk. Johnnyt
i dig the way valley BB's play. i think i'd like 'em a lot more if they tightened up the pockets though. i think with deeper slate and 4" pockets they'd play jam up. i don't mind slower cloth. i think someone should have to have some sort of stroke to move the CB around the table.