Have just been looking on the OB site Royce.
You don't need to convince me of squirt properties, I use BHE and test every cue I try to establish its squirt characteristics and have my cues altered in ferrule diameter and ferrule materials to get the squirt that suits my preferred bridge length.
Anyway, you, and your site mentioned creating different hits, hard, soft and in between I guess, and 2 years of testing done on this.
Can you expand on how you go about creating different hits and if this has any marked difference in performance, beyond psychological.
Cheers,
Colin
Colin
Absolutely!
A little background.
Our first shaft, the OB-1, was made with 6 pieces of flat laminated maple each turned round and then notched so that they would "nest" together kind of like a clover leaf. That made the blank from which we turned the shaft. One of the interesting things about the OB-1 is that we drill through the center of the shaft for the entire length from end to end. We then install a silicone foam rubber core that acts as a noise cancellation device. The core runs from just above the joint to about 6" from the tip end of the shaft. The goal was a shaft that was quiet, and it proved to be very successful.
Later, after adding the OB-2, which is just a smaller diameter version of the OB-1, we still had requests for shafts that made the "ping" kind of sound. So, I decided to bring 2 new shafts to market to accommodate those who wanted the sound, and that gave us the Classic and the Pro. These shafts don't have the hole or the core of the OB's, and as such are more stiff and make more sound when you hit the cue ball.
All of the shafts do have what we call the "tip end treatment". This is basically a hole as well as ferrule materials and engineering to keep the tip end mass as low as possible while still providing the feel and sound that the rest of the shaft was designed for.
In 2013 we made the change to the "+" model shafts, which is mostly a change in the construction of the blank itself. Instead of using 6 pieces of flat laminated maple, we use 6 pieces of solid maple to build the blank. At the same time, we improved our Tip End Treatment to further reduce the tip end mass by app. 13% across the board.
So, now to answer your question. These differences absolutely do change the characteristics of the different cue shafts. The wood ferruled shafts are much quieter, and feel softer. They are also a little more flexible so they spin the cue ball a little easier. The white ferruled shafts hit more firm with more sound, and they are a little more stiff. So it takes a little more work to spin the cue ball with those than with their wood ferrule counterparts.
The Classic+ and the Pro+ are the shafts we recommend when someone is looking for the more traditional type of feel and sound. The OB-1+ and the OB-2+ are recommended for those looking for the "soft but solid" type of feel.
When we launched the white ferruled shafts, I some what expected that they would take over and be more popular than the wood ferruled shafts. But the sales percentages run surprisingly close. The last time we checked, the 4 different models of shafts were all within a couple of percent of each other.
I think I covered it all.
Royce
