I think Predator needs to go back into the laboratory on their new cloth.
- Thread starter dnschmidt
- Start date
boogieman
It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that ping.
But why? What's the practical purpose? If your stimpmeter, perfectly callibrated, says the cloth is playing at a 30 (insert arbitrary number scheme here) isn't it still about adapting to the table you're playing on? I mean, a number is one thing, but you can test it simply by hitting the correct shots.
I guess it might make an interesting tidbit of info for the viewing audience, but it's kind of like a solution waiting for a problem.
A couple of simple lag shots tells me what I need to know. Speed wise anyway.
In all the years I’ve played it was pretty easy to adjust one’s game to work on beer stained bar room rugs, poorly stretched and slow old simonis, properly installed 860 and 760. Also brand new and old versions of all of the above. Also 7, 8, and 9’ tables. Also garbage 9’ straight rail carom tables in Asian rooms, and championship caliber heated 10’ tables in carom rooms with simonis 300.
What I’ve had a lot of trouble adjusting to has been the Diamond rail bounce and rail bounce angle. I know I must sound like a broken record, but it just doesn’t feel natural. It’s also inconsistent to me. Sometimes it bounces the way I expect, sometimes much harder and/or different angle.
In this huge range of equipment, the only one I couldn’t reliably adapt to has been the Diamond. Go figure.
Table conditions (cloth, rails, construction, etc.) should not be so radically different that you have to go from swinging like Babe Ruth to travel three rails on one table to bunting on another table to get the same result.
The quest to make the game “easier”, with all the new-fangled gadgets and “improvements”, has made the game worse.
I would take the table conditions of 50 years ago in the pool hall where I grew up to what the conditions are now.
The quest to make the game “easier”, with all the new-fangled gadgets and “improvements”, has made the game worse.
I would take the table conditions of 50 years ago in the pool hall where I grew up to what the conditions are now.
Dr. Dave built one and has the instructions on his website.
They measure how far a ball will travel after rolling down a little ramp.
Balls rolling down a little ramp have forward roll on them when they reach the end of the ramp.
That does not equate exactly to conditions in pool.
Many times the cue ball is traveling forward in a slide or with backspin.
I like to know how far a sliding cue ball will travel before it turns into a forward roll and how far a cue ball with backspin will travel before the backspin will wear off.
That, to me, is more useful than measuring a ball rolling down a little ramp like a LEGO toy.
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I think BasementDweller nailed it exactly right in the post below.
The cloth the bigger events tended to be played on in prior decades, well back into at least the 40's, was not slow. Yes it was slower than some (but not all) of today's cloth, but that doesn't make it slow, just means it wasn't in the stupid fast range that some of today's cloths get up into. And yes in times past there were some really slow cloths out there in various bars and pool rooms that big events were not being held on (I spent my share of time on some), but that is still the case today even if it was more widespread then. It doesn't seem to me that there is much room for debate about the speed of the cloth that was available in past times and that the pros of yesteryear were playing on since we don't have to rely on guesses or even personal recollections. There is quite a bit of video going back the better part of a century, and almost without exception the tables have reasonable speed to them.
If the problem was the table, it would show up when the pros play on them. It doesn't.
Or its possible the table wasnt set up properly to begin with. Same could be said of ANY table.
As for Diamond cushions, i msg'd Chad there and he said that their Artemis rubber 'plays in' as in it loses the 'bouncy' effect fairly quickly. I've played on a 9ft. blue-label that was few months old and i thought it played great. Also i recently played on a new 7ft blue that didn't seem bouncy to me. I know they use different rubber for the small table so that could be part of it.
Translation..... we went from strong arm Gorilla pool to finesse pool.
That is true. Not sure that was a good move for the Amateurs but you are on target with your comment.
Playing on faster and faster cloth is a lot like walking on fence. Easy to fall off.
75-25 as I recall. That said, Stevens cloth played noticably slower than Simoniz. Simoniz and Granito were primarily used on Three Cushion tables back then, and rarely used on pool tables.
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I've never had a problem with the "bounce" off the rails on a Diamond table. Only had to adjust to how much they shorten up the banks. Let's just say they play different than a Gold Crown and leave it at that.
The problem is that "difference" is less geometrically correct, and less consistent, which makes for a lesser experience.
That explains everything! I never did well in Geometry.
A Diamond rep is going to say something like that. I can show you 10 diamond tables, blue at that, in 3 different states, that play like pinball machines. Both 9' and 7'. There is nothing wrong with their setup. Its just the way they play.
Yes - surely there's video evidence of an old match (say prior to the 80's) that was played on these slow tables. I can't say I've specifically hunted for these matches, but I will say the ones I've watched show tables that played just fine. One can't even use the argument that the videos are misleading because anyone that's spent as much time watching pool as I have, and I know there's a lot of them here on AZ, should have a good feel for what they are seeing. One can watch the player's cueing motion and get a feel for how hard they are hitting the cue ball. Actually, if anything I've been impressed with the quality/speed of the rails on most old matches that I've seen.
Again, I'm talking about matches that were important enough to televise, not random matches, played on random equipment, in random pool rooms.
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That says quite a lot actually. Do we go back in time when a stroke was needed or do we strive for infinite levels of stroke perfection?