Joint material question.

Gravey39

Gravey39

Active member
I’ve been looking to get a custom made finally. So my shooter right now is a meucci that’s from the early 90’s. It has some brown plastic material as the joint. I kind of like how the hot feels, it’s softer. I have shot with a stainless joint on a couple cues and I never liked them. I ended up selling them fairly quickly. I’d assume pheno and stuff like that is Similar. So on the custom that I want made, I want a material slightly more firm then meucci. But no where near as hard as stainless. Could someone chime in on some material please?

Also I remember reading a thread where someone had the joint and ferrule material hardness ratings, I couldn’t seem to find it. If someone knows what it is could you please link that too?
 
Gravey39 said:
I’ve been looking to get a custom made finally. So my shooter right now is a meucci that’s from the early 90’s. It has some brown plastic material as the joint. I kind of like how the hot feels, it’s softer. I have shot with a stainless joint on a couple cues and I never liked them. I ended up selling them fairly quickly. I’d assume pheno and stuff like that is Similar. So on the custom that I want made, I want a material slightly more firm then meucci. But no where near as hard as stainless. Could someone chime in on some material please?

Also I remember reading a thread where someone had the joint and ferrule material hardness ratings, I couldn’t seem to find it. If someone knows what it is could you please link that too?
Click to expand...
The joint has little effect on how a cue feels. This has been proven more than once in blind testing. The ferrule material, shaft size and taper and tip hardness have way more effect(s) in feel. I've had soft hitting steel-joint cues, hard hitting synthetic wood-to-wood cues, etc. Meucci's tended to hit soft because of a long, flexible shaft taper and soft ABS ferrules. One of THE HARDEST hitting, STIFFEST cues i ever hit was a fairly recent vintage Southwest. Phenolic wood-2-wood joint with their stiff profile shaft and a Triangle tip. Was like hitting the cueball with a steel rod imo. Bottom line is don't assume that a certain joint will give certain hit.
 
Schons have always been considered one of the best hitting cues there is and they all exclusively use stainless steel compression joints and solid maple shafts.
 
garczar said:
The joint has little effect on how a cue feels. This has been proven more than once in blind testing. The ferrule material, shaft size and taper and tip hardness have way more effect(s) in feel. I've had soft hitting steel-joint cues, hard hitting synthetic wood-to-wood cues, etc. Meucci's tended to hit soft because of a long, flexible shaft taper and soft ABS ferrules. One of THE HARDEST hitting, STIFFEST cues i ever hit was a fairly recent vintage Southwest. Phenolic wood-2-wood joint with their stiff profile shaft and a Triangle tip. Was like hitting the cueball with a steel rod imo. Bottom line is don't assume that a certain joint will give certain hit.
Click to expand...
Then maybe it was the ferrule of the stainless cues I’ve used. I did not know that. But that is kind of weird. Not saying it is anything, maybe I’m just crazy. I’ve put one of my black dot shafts onto a cue with a different stainless joint and it stiffened up a bit. Might just be a pore constructed cue and meucci might just be made to be softer. If joints really don’t matter that’s the only logical thing I could think of why that happened.
 
Linen phenolic has always been my favorite joint material. I love wood to wood and the feel phenolic gives.
 
garczar said:
The joint has little effect on how a cue feels. This has been proven more than once in blind testing. The ferrule material, shaft size and taper and tip hardness have way more effect(s) in feel. I've had soft hitting steel-joint cues, hard hitting synthetic wood-to-wood cues, etc. Meucci's tended to hit soft because of a long, flexible shaft taper and soft ABS ferrules. One of THE HARDEST hitting, STIFFEST cues i ever hit was a fairly recent vintage Southwest. Phenolic wood-2-wood joint with their stiff profile shaft and a Triangle tip. Was like hitting the cueball with a steel rod imo. Bottom line is don't assume that a certain joint will give certain hit.
Click to expand...

I've played with the same cue with different joints and they hit different. Mezz Wavy vs their smaller one, Predator Radial vs the Unlock, with the same shaft. In every case the larger pin design had a better hit feel with more feedback. Also I have severa cues from the same cuemaker, using the same shafts and same pin, and the hit feel changes based on the material used. My cue that was just finished used a brown linen joint and it has stiffer hit than the 5-6 other cues I used from him.

You are right that the shaft plays a big part in the hit feel, but with the same shaft, swapping out the joint design will change the hit on that same shaft from cue to cue. For the hit feel, everything from the tip to the bumper plays a part.
 
hang-the-9 said:
I've played with the same cue with different joints and they hit different. Mezz Wavy vs their smaller one, Predator Radial vs the Unlock, with the same shaft. In every case the larger pin design had a better hit feel with more feedback. Also I have severa cues from the same cuemaker, using the same shafts and same pin, and the hit feel changes based on the material used. My cue that was just finished used a brown linen joint and it has stiffer hit than the 5-6 other cues I used from him.

You are right that the shaft plays a big part in the hit feel, but with the same shaft, swapping out the joint design will change the hit on that same shaft from cue to cue. For the hit feel, everything from the tip to the bumper plays a part.
Click to expand...
That’s what I was thinking. Like I said I’ve put my black dot shaft onto a stainless joint compared to the meucci plastic joint and it stiffened up a lot compared to the meucci. My custom im having built I’m going with a black juma joint with a tomahawk ferrule.
 
I like wood-wood and phenolic both keep the nose weight of the cue on the light side and the balance back where I like it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top