anybody shoot with an ash shaft?

a little secondhand information

Bob Jewett said:

In general a higher sos will mean that there will be better energy transfer from stick to ball.

sos is not directly related to density. There are some pretty good on-line references that even discuss wood. The people who have the most interest in speed of sound in wood are those who make musical instruments. Who would have guessed?

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A friend had a fiddle made back in the mid-nineties. $30,000, with the goal being to move himself up one chair in a symphony orchestra. Fourth to third or third to second, this wasn't even expected to move him to the top of the heap!

Anyway, what I found interesting was the secondhand words from the builder. As might be expected, he made very good stringed instruments. He said about one in twenty or thirty was great. The builder himself never knew which that would be until they were played.

What is the difference between good and great in a fiddle? What is the difference between good and great in a pool cue?

Hu

ShootingArts said:

A friend had a fiddle made back in the mid-nineties. $30,000, with the goal being to move himself up one chair in a symphony orchestra. Fourth to third or third to second, this wasn't even expected to move him to the top of the heap!

Anyway, what I found interesting was the secondhand words from the builder. As might be expected, he made very good stringed instruments. He said about one in twenty or thirty was great. The builder himself never knew which that would be until they were played.

What is the difference between good and great in a fiddle? What is the difference between good and great in a pool cue?

Hu

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I would say that the difference between very good or great in a pool cue is consistency of great feel during the shot, to a lesser extent sound- for a fiddle- consistency of great sound and to a lesser extent feel. You need a tremendous amount of experience and have to be very proficient with either a cue or a musical instrument to truly know and understand subtle differences between very good and great.

I do not think that either great cue makers or great instrument makers really know that they have crafted the best of their best until the project is fully complete and it just happens that all of their expertise and all of the raw materials come together at times to create perfection.

I would doubt that every Stratavarius violin plays exactly the same and sounds exactly the same- they are the best of the best as a small group and that consistency makes them the most valuable and desired as they are small in numbers as well- rarity.

mikemosconi said:

I would say that the difference between very good or great in a pool cue is consistency of great feel during the shot

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Which, as we know, is “in the hands of the beholder” - not an objective quality. This isn’t the same as a musical instrument, which produces sound quality audible to others.

pj
chgo

I’ve played guitar for 52 years. There is no ‘best’. Way too many individual variables. I can play better on $200 Fender style Squier than a $3000 Gibson. For others, it would be the reverse. I can ‘dabble’ on a violin ( 3 years of excruciating lessons) but give me a Nova Scotia fiddle any day to mess around on.

Billiard cues are just a stick. The differenceS between woods is minimal Compared to the effect of variations in the tip, table cloth, rails, humidity etc. The familiar cue can’t be compared to an unfamiliar one until you have use the latter playing every day for a month. A high end Gibson guitar might play better than a Squier but I’d need to Noodle with it for a half year.

Patrick Johnson said:

Which, as we know, is “in the hands of the beholder” - not an objective quality. This isn’t the same as a musical instrument, which produces sound quality audible to others.

pj
chgo

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You did not quote my entire response- I SAID : feel for a cue and sound for a musical instrument. Of course the feel of a cue is subjective-that is obvious- sound from a musical instrument of course can be heard by others including the player. In both cases if two people play with the same cue- both can possibly come to the same conclusion that the cue feels great when playing - or they can differ on their conclusions about the feel of a cue. Same can be said of the sound from a musical instrument- some may like the sound, some may not. A musical performer can draw different conclusions than a musical audience. Lots of people play music for themselves, not for an audience.

Whether you consider one or the other characteristic to be objective or subjective in terms of evaluation- all of it comes down to personal choice in the end - whether you are the player or the listener.