Meucci Myth

MattPoland

MattPoland

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
I’ve played with a Meucci 97-8 for just shy of 20 years. I’ve been regaled with stories of how much spin a Meucci puts on the ball ever since I first got it. Everyone told me it was because of the flex in the shaft. Early last year it dawned on me the significance of shaft size. My shaft was 13mm and had a chance to try a stick with <13mm. I had no idea what that was. I thought I was handed a snooker cue (naive). I then bought a 1986 McDermott D6 with 12.75mm shaft and have used that the past year. Now as I know the feel of that and have learned more about LD shafts. I wonder this. Do most players think all Meuccis are super flexible when in truth their perceptions were formed from anecdotes of when Meucci started releasing LD shafts? Because I now have a hard time thinking of ANY 13mm shaft as flexible. It’s like stroking with a tree trunk when I pick it up now.


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MattPoland said:
I’ve played with a Meucci 97-8 for just shy of 20 years. I’ve been regaled with stories of how much spin a Meucci puts on the ball ever since I first got it. Everyone told me it was because of the flex in the shaft. Early last year it dawned on me the significance of shaft size. My shaft was 13mm and had a chance to try a stick with <13mm. I had no idea what that was. I thought I was handed a snooker cue (naive). I then bought a 1986 McDermott D6 with 12.75mm shaft and have used that the past year. Now as I know the feel of that and have learned more about LD shafts. I wonder this. Do most players think all Meuccis are super flexible when in truth their perceptions were formed from anecdotes of when Meucci started releasing LD shafts? Because I now have a hard time thinking of ANY 13mm shaft as flexible. It’s like stroking with a tree trunk when I pick it up now.


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I have a couple of Meucci cues. I tried to buy at least one of the big name production cues for a collection many years ago, how could you not have a Meucci?

Model HALL OF FAME 3. I do not play this cue much but on several occasions certain shots would get the shaft to wobble like no other I have ever seen. I was watching my Brother in law use it once and I could not believe my eyes! I actually saw him hit a shot and the shaft started shaking so bad I thought he was going to have to grab it to stop the quivering. I have only seen this happen three times and it has been impossible for me to reproduce.

I still own the cue and love the looks of it. Being a man of science I have always wondered why this one cue could react like that. I think I will get it out of the rack and play it for an hour:cool:
 
MattPoland said:
I’ve played with a Meucci 97-8 for just shy of 20 years. I’ve been regaled with stories of how much spin a Meucci puts on the ball ever since I first got it. Everyone told me it was because of the flex in the shaft. Early last year it dawned on me the significance of shaft size. My shaft was 13mm and had a chance to try a stick with <13mm. I had no idea what that was. I thought I was handed a snooker cue (naive). I then bought a 1986 McDermott D6 with 12.75mm shaft and have used that the past year. Now as I know the feel of that and have learned more about LD shafts. I wonder this. Do most players think all Meuccis are super flexible when in truth their perceptions were formed from anecdotes of when Meucci started releasing LD shafts? Because I now have a hard time thinking of ANY 13mm shaft as flexible. It’s like stroking with a tree trunk when I pick it up now.


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That has nothing to do with the spine of the shaft. Yes meucci cue shafts and cues are whippey and dodgy as all get down and I’ve played with 10mm shafts with much more power.

That’s all in the taper. LD does not rely on taper generally speaking its predominately an endmass vs ball ratio


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Cuebuddy said:
I have a couple of Meucci cues. I tried to buy at least one of the big name production cues for a collection many years ago, how could you not have a Meucci?



Model HALL OF FAME 3. I do not play this cue much but on several occasions certain shots would get the shaft to wobble like no other I have ever seen. I was watching my Brother in law use it once and I could not believe my eyes! I actually saw him hit a shot and the shaft started shaking so bad I thought he was going to have to grab it to stop the quivering. I have only seen this happen three times and it has been impossible for me to reproduce.



I still own the cue and love the looks of it. Being a man of science I have always wondered why this one cue could react like that. I think I will get it out of the rack and play it for an hour:cool:
Click to expand...



The nodal points created by the taper are too wide....dat be why it do the spaghetti


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Cuebuddy said:
That’s what I was thinking but I did not want to sound like a knowidall:o
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I really don’t know how he does it...I mean your lil cues are way skinnier and I doubt they would do the pasta dance 🤣.

I’d like to see bob put one up on his myth destroyer vs a meucci


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The Meucci's from the '77-'80 days had LONG parallel section compared to say a JOSS. We were a bunch of cue-dummies in those days compared to now. The JOSS was stiff and the Meucci wasn't. That was about as far it went. I got to play some with Buddy's BH-5 and it was one SWEET playing cue. I bought a BH-1 from him and it hit about the same. I know there's a lot of Meucci knockers out there but the early Original's played fantastic. Build-quality was really good in those cues. Later on things changed and its too bad.
 
Spin

The amount of spin has NOTHING to do with shaft diameter, low deflection, high deflection, SS tip, Hard tip ETC. Spin comes from striking the cue ball on the horizontal axis up to 3 tips ( 1 tip = 3.78mm or the circumference of the circle in the red circle cue ball) and how firm you strike the cue ball. There are many myths in pool out there that are just not true.

I used to believe a lot of those myths :frown: until I was educated now I have seen the light :D
 
MattPoland said:
I’ve played with a Meucci 97-8 for just shy of 20 years. I’ve been regaled with stories of how much spin a Meucci puts on the ball ever since I first got it. Everyone told me it was because of the flex in the shaft. Early last year it dawned on me the significance of shaft size. My shaft was 13mm and had a chance to try a stick with <13mm. I had no idea what that was. I thought I was handed a snooker cue (naive). I then bought a 1986 McDermott D6 with 12.75mm shaft and have used that the past year. Now as I know the feel of that and have learned more about LD shafts. I wonder this. Do most players think all Meuccis are super flexible when in truth their perceptions were formed from anecdotes of when Meucci started releasing LD shafts? Because I now have a hard time thinking of ANY 13mm shaft as flexible. It’s like stroking with a tree trunk when I pick it up now.


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I don't know about the spin you can get with a Meucci shaft but I did an experiment with a friend one day since we had a lot of different shafts and tips around. This was roughly the setup, the goal was to see how much down table we can get the cueball with low right spin, to where the star is. I don't fully remember the exact positions we had but it's close. We each took 2-3 shots with each shaft/tip we tested.

ShaftTest.png

The least amount of action we got was with a standard shaft with a one layer tip, it came to about 1.5 diamonds up from the corner. A smaller diameter normal shaft got a bit lower. A layered tip got even lower. Next up was a medium LD shaft with a standard tip, then a medium LD shaft with a layered tip. When we used a low LD shaft with a layered tip we were able to draw and spin the cueball to the corner pocket and even to the short rail a bit missing the pocket. I think we had like 6 different combinations of shafts to play with.
 
SFC9ball said:
The amount of spin has NOTHING to do with shaft diameter, low deflection, high deflection, SS tip, Hard tip ETC. Spin comes from striking the cue ball on the horizontal axis up to 3 tips ( 1 tip = 3.78mm or the circumference of the circle in the red circle cue ball) and how firm you strike the cue ball. There are many myths in pool out there that are just not true.

I used to believe a lot of those myths :frown: until I was educated now I have seen the light :D
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So many people believe sudo scientific theories that are just made up by pool players that over think things................ it's just as simple as you say

Kim
 
whammo57 said:
So many people believe sudo scientific theories that are just made up by pool players that over think things................ it's just as simple as you say

Kim
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You mean using "aged,cured pre-flag Master chalk" WON'T give me more spin/control/accuracy/luck/winnings?? Man did i get taken.
 
I’ve never had the spaghetti experience with my Meucci. I wonder if that’s because my shaft was a basic stock 13mm. Not dot, no circle, no PRO. It has pretty much always played like a bar cue except with a nice tip, pro taper and pretty butt. In the last few days I dusted it off and started breaking with it because it’s way more stiff and heavy than my old McDermott.


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MattPoland said:
I’ve never had the spaghetti experience with my Meucci. I wonder if that’s because my shaft was a basic stock 13mm. Not dot, no circle, no PRO. It has pretty much always played like a bar cue except with a nice tip, pro taper and pretty butt. In the last few days I dusted it off and started breaking with it because it’s way more stiff and heavy than my old McDermott.


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Agree. I've owned about three of them and while more flexible than my JOSS's(both) and R. Black i never considered them "whippy" at all.
 
MattPoland said:
I see this video.
https://youtu.be/yonn4KeX4Ws

But I wonder if you need to own a Meucci shaft <13mm before you ever see anything like that.
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High speed video will show something like that for all cues when you hit the cue ball off-center. Some cues do it a lot more than others. A carom cue with a conical taper might have no obvious wiggling but it is doing it at least a little.

I think a very long nearly cylindrical taper with as much mass as possible up front will give the largest wiggle.
 
And I’m not necessarily comparing my experience to the video so much as every player over the last 20 years that ever saw my stick and told me “Oh boy. A Meucci, huh? You like that? Boy you sure get a lot of flex on one of those. It’s like stroking with a twig. I prefer a stiffer stick.”


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garczar said:
... Also, he had about a foot of bridge length. That might be part of it, i don't know.
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If your bridge is firm and at the location where the wiggle would normally be the largest, it will kill the wiggle. If your bridge is at a "node" it will damp the vibration a lot less. To emphasize the wiggle, use an open bridge and let the cue come up off the hand at the end of the shot.

The position of the grip hand may have a similar effect, but the wiggle is generally a lot less back there.

(If it makes you more comfortable, substitute "transverse vibrational modes" for "wiggle" above.)
 
MattPoland said:
And I’m not necessarily comparing my experience to the video so much as every player over the last 20 years that ever saw my stick and told me “Oh boy. A Meucci, huh? You like that? Boy you sure get a lot of flex on one of those. It’s like stroking with a twig. I prefer a stiffer stick.”


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Poolhall lore for sure. Its funny how many have never hit a ball with one but will tell anybody that "boy those muchee's are super whippy pool sticks".
 
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