Best hitting joint?

Best hit

  • Total voters
    129
jmurphy

jmurphy

SWEET
Silver Member
Which of these joints make for the best playing cues?
I voted 5/16 X 18 solid Ivory because thus far my 17C Gina has been the best hitting cue I have owned.
Although this is subject to possibly change because Mike Lambros is making me a cue, so the jury has not made it's final decision yet...lol
 
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jmurphy said:
Which of these joints make for the best playing cues?
I voted 5/16 X 18 solid Ivory because thus far my 17C Gina has been the best hitting cue I have owned.
Although this is subject to possibly change because Mike Lambros is making me a cue, so the jury has not made it's final decision yet...lol
Click to expand...

Mike makes the best joint on the planet.

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Tapatalk 2
 
there are many joint and pin combos not listed
such as flat faced /radial
ivory flat faced/radial
sleeved/ pick a pin
 
cleary said:
I prefer blunts but that's just me.
Click to expand...

You should try these then..

royal.jpg

As for the other, I really don't think it matters other than you are able to understand and are comfortable with how the cue feedback is. I've had a fat brass Schmelke joint, SS and wood/wood and have been leaning towards the wood/wood lately. :confused:
 
bbb said:
there are many joint and pin combos not listed
such as flat faced /radial
ivory flat faced/radial
sleeved/ pick a pin
Click to expand...

I guess I should have listed "other" at the bottom.
Of course these posts allow for "write in" joint pin combos
 
i might add that i beleive many cuemakers beleive you cant tell the difference in joints or pins if a blind test were done......:embarrassed2:
 
It s all about the craftmanship and the knowledge of the cuemaker. The *Hit* of a cue can be great with any type of joint and pin.
The cuemaker is the piece in the puzzle-how he s putting the materials together.

I play atm a steeljointed Radial-Pin on my Josey- Ebony into Ebony forearm. One of my students- a real crazy cue-a-holic still cannot believe why my cue plays different.
I then let him play with a *very simple sneaky pete* from a friend who built it. With Steel-Joint with Uni-Lock......-first comment: Never- unilock bad, etcetera........-- well, he played the first shots and again he looked at me like seeing E.T. in person. Totally differant again like he expected.

'Again: it s all about the craftmenship how he puts the materials together- that s the art.
And everybody can ruin the work with the best materials, too :p
 
jmurphy said:
Which of these joints make for the best playing cues?
I voted 5/16 X 18 solid Ivory because thus far my 17C Gina has been the best hitting cue I have owned.
Although this is subject to possibly change because Mike Lambros is making me a cue, so the jury has not made it's final decision yet...lol
Click to expand...

How do you define "the best" ??
 
whammo57 said:
I can't tell the difference.

Kim
Click to expand...
Neither can almost anybody else.

pj
chgo

6/14/99

Here's something interesting we tried in 1991:
At an event we had 16 cues with the butt, joint and the ferrules covered with masking tape...then numbered. No one could "see" if the cue was a steel, plastic or wood joint (as in a Pete), nor detect by the style of ferrule.

We had 70 players...each hit balls with the cues throughout the weekend. The results: Of nearly 800 attempts over the time period, the players guessed wrong about what type joint was in the cue more than 7 out of 10 times.

A top pro (Meucci staffer) happened to be there, having done an exhibition and the cue he liked the most during the attempts: He thought was surely a Meucci, plastic joint when in reality it was an older Adams with a piloted steel joint; and additionally guessed the Meucci he shot with as a
cue with a steel joint.

Again, I maintain that cues with different joint materials may sound differently; may be balanced differently, but what is "hit" ? Doesn't "hit" have to do with all the senses: Vibration (feel), sound, balance, etc. What is a "soft" hit? What is a "hard" hit? (what does this mean, if not
the sound the cue makes upon impact, or are people ref. to the vibration in the butt?) Does a hard hit vibrate more and make a different sound? A soft hit vibrate less with a different sound?

I maintain that the primary criteria that differentiates one cue from another begins with:
>The tip (soft, med or hard)
>The shaft diameter and density of the wood
>The taper (or stiffness of the shaft)

To this day, I still don't believe the joint has much to do with the reaction of the cueball off the shaft, rather it is the 3 aforementioned that have far more bearing on how a cue plays than anything else. Remember, what makes the predator shaft play differently is what is located at the tip,
inside the shaft, the ferrule and the laminations....not the joint or butt.

In closing, our experiment asked which cue the players liked best: Of the 70 players, nearly 55 liked the hit of two cues with different numbers:
When the two were exposed, they both were sneaky petes, wood to wood joints, (one a Scruggs and the other a Huebler); both about 19 oz., both about 13 1/4mm and tended to be on the stiff side of "hit". By the way, the 55 who liked the hit of these two cues: more than half thought they would be steel jointed.

John McChesney
Click to expand...
 
bbb said:
i might add that i beleive many cuemakers beleive you cant tell the difference in joints or pins if a blind test were done......:embarrassed2:
Click to expand...


uj.jpg



wj.jpg


2 different Mezz joints. I have 2 Mezz cues with same model shaft, same model tip, but different joints. Could be my imagination, but one feels like it has a softer hit.

Which is best is matter of preference.
 
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6/14/99



Here's something interesting we tried in 1991:

At an event we had 16 cues with the butt, joint and the ferrules covered with masking tape...then numbered. No one could "see" if the cue was a steel, plastic or wood joint (as in a Pete), nor detect by the style of ferrule.



We had 70 players...each hit balls with the cues throughout the weekend. The results:



A top pro (Meucci staffer) happened to be there, having done an exhibition and the cue he liked the most during the attempts: He thought was surely a Meucci, plastic joint when in reality it was an older Adams with a piloted steel joint; and additionally guessed the Meucci he shot with as a

cue with a steel joint.



Again, I maintain that cues with different joint materials may sound differently; may be balanced differently, but what is "hit" ? Doesn't "hit" have to do with all the senses: Vibration (feel), sound, balance, etc. What is a "soft" hit? What is a "hard" hit? (what does this mean, if not

the sound the cue makes upon impact, or are people ref. to the vibration in the butt?) Does a hard hit vibrate more and make a different sound? A soft hit vibrate less with a different sound?



I maintain that the primary criteria that differentiates one cue from another begins with:

>The tip (soft, med or hard)

>The shaft diameter and density of the wood

>The taper (or stiffness of the shaft)



To this day, I still don't believe the joint has much to do with the reaction of the cueball off the shaft, rather it is the 3 aforementioned that have far more bearing on how a cue plays than anything else. Remember, what makes the predator shaft play differently is what is located at the tip,

inside the shaft, the ferrule and the laminations....not the joint or butt.



In closing, our experiment asked which cue the players liked best: Of the 70 players, nearly 55 liked the hit of two cues with different numbers:

When the two were exposed, they both were sneaky petes, wood to wood joints, (one a Scruggs and the other a Huebler); both about 19 oz., both about 13 1/4mm and tended to be on the stiff side of "hit". By the way, the 55 who liked the hit of these two cues: more than half thought they would be steel jointed.



John McChesney
Click to expand...


These wordsof John McChesney are the best I've ever heard about the questions of hit and how it is affected by the joint.
 
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I would add another aspects to John McChesney's argumentations:

The hit may be affected strongly also by the age of the wood, the butt construction + its woods and how tight the shaft and butt are fixed / pressed together by the thread of the joint. But the screw itself and the threads + the materials of the joint are affecting the hit much less than tip, ferrule, wood and butt construction. This is just my personal experience.
 
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I think the shaft has a certain resonance and the butt has a different resonance. The better the joint, the more the cue feels like it's one piece. It is more efficient in the transfer of energy. Some joints are better than others in that regard.

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Tapatalk 2
 
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