Do you have a link to the "excruciating detail" that I can read? I've played on GCs a lot, but at a time in my life when the nuance of table performance was something I wasn't aware of. Everyone's got tables they love, usually their own, and some faults are easy to overlook or simply don't make a material difference in play.
I had a hard time finding it myself, so I'll just repost my list. You could have made your own list by asking yourself, "What's wrong here?" I first posted this list about 2005. In looking over this list now, I think there are a couple of things that could be added. Any suggestions?
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Try standing back and thinking about how you would change a GC to make it better. If you can think of nothing then you are not afflicted with my problem: engineer's attitude.
I have scars on my knuckles because some Brunswick idiot decided to put scorewheels and nameplates exactly where my knuckles pass if I use a nice, level stroke.
I get nasty, greasy goo on my cue when I have to bridge over the cheap fake rubber pocket liners which often stick out and help balls rattle.
People get dings on their cues because the pocket irons are not flush with the rest of the table.
The rack hanger (GC3) is another idiot design.
The scorewheels often don't work, maybe because they get gummed-up with blood.
Put the balls into the front of the table at 1 pocket and they either rattle back and forth or they slide through to your opponent's side. Sometimes they hide behind the obnoxious Brunswick logo/nameplate, which makes counting difficult.
Pretty much every GC3 installed in this area about 1995 has dead/dying cushions. Technically, this is not a design misfeature, but it is broken supply chain monitoring. They started dying within a few years of installation. It makes every cushion contact an adventure.
The GC3 does not have doweled slates. (Usually there are brass pins that pass between adjoining slates to keep them aligned.) Some idiot at Brunswick decided to save a little money on the so-called top-of-the-line table. Good job, fool. This may not apply to all GC3s, but it does to the one I often play on where the foot slate started to buckle up.
The diamond sites on the curved rails are often hard to see.
The drop pockets ("drop" means there is no ball return) hold only three balls if you care about hard shots not being rejected. I shot a shot last night into an empty pocket and the ball took a loop around the bottom of the pocket and jumped back onto the table. Here's a trick I learned from Tony Annigoni: if you are going to shoot a ball hard, make sure there are exactly two balls in the pocket. One sits centered on the drain hole and is likely to spring the new ball back. Two balls are random enough to damp the extra energy. Three starts to be too full, and four is very, very dangerous.
All of the cheap, thin plating has worn off the pocket irons where I play. That happened in the first five years or so. Probably more cost-cutting on the "Cadillac". On older GCs, the metal trim leaves your light-colored pants streaked with oxide.
You might be interested in this comment from the official history of the Brunswick company, an excellent book called "Brunswick - The Story of an American Company - The First 150 Years", written by Rick Kogan and published in 1995 by Brunswick (page 97):
During the 1960s, billiards experienced a renaissance thanks to a film called "The Hustler," starring Paul Newman, Jackie Gleason, Piper Laurie, and George C. Scott. It re-introduced Americans to poolrooms around the county, and new facilities began to go up in suburban shopping centers and middle income neighborhoods. Many of these featured wall-to-wall carpeting, ersatz Tiffany lamps, and pastel tabletops. Most of them featured Brunswick tables. In 1966, some 3,000 new poolrooms opened, the majority called "family billiard centers." Though families sampled, they didn't stay. By 1970, this boom too was bust, and billiards would not again play a major role in Brunswick's operations .
(emphasis mine)
Addendum: Now that Brunswick Billiards has been sold, maybe the new management will change things.
