9ballr
9Ballr - what makes your opinion the absolute truth? Isn't there a lot of personal preference and what feels right for each player in their own hands?
You say better feel? in my opinion you get custom cue makers and 2 identical cues can hit and feel completely different - so in that aspect, production cues/shafts are more consistent and better
Less hassle in the long run? having to go back to one particular custom cue maker to have work done can cost far more and take significantly longer to be done.
Play any custom cue and adopt quickly? I would say the same thing about LD shafts, I typically shoot with a predator but picked up a cue with an OB-1 shaft on it and within the first game I adjusted to it.
Why do custom cue makers sell cues with regular shafts? because this costs them next to nothing to make, someone said about $30. The amount of work that goes into it is significantly less and they don't have to pay for the hundreds of hours of R&D that go into improving on technologies.
Custom cue makers can make LD shafts but combining the 2 statements I've already said, the consistency isn't their from product to product AND they don't want to put in countless hours of R&D and then have to raise the costs even more.
LD vs standard shaft? I don't think anyone is saying that one is superior or inferior to another, but each player has the right to try all of them and see what is right for them.
Solid wood shafts give a far superior feel? that is your opinion
Solid wood shafts play much better? that is your opinion, but as an instructor I find it far easier teaching new players using LD shafts. my opinion is that the learning curve is much better and doesn't take many many years to learn the cue and how to adjust for deflection/squirt
"masse's, moving an object ball around another ball that's in the way, and most action in general"? What facts do you have to prove this other than your own opinion? for my own playing ability, I feel any shaft with a shaped and scuffed tip can get as much action on a cue ball as any other shaft with same shape and scuffed tip (as long as same tip, radius, scuffing, stroke)
"simply better in every aspect" ? again this is your opinion
"Another side bonus, has nothing to do with quality, is that one certainly doesn't have to worry about this bs about a "better" shaft that "I just gotta get" coming out every 3-4 years. " ? so with this statement, maybe the player hasn't found what is 'just right' for them, who are you to say that they can't keep searching for the perfect butt/shaft combination that plays perfect for them?
"I can also throw out some words like that too and say that there are hundreds of thousands of pool players who buy LD shafts and then you see 90% (heck let's make it 99% since we're making stuff up on the spot) of them on sale three months later because they're going back to traditional shafts." - in my experience only a small percentage of players that try LD go back to standard shafts and those are typically the players that have been playing 20+ years and cannot (will not) change, so they go back to what they are use to.
In my opinion - I've been playing with low deflection shafts for over 8 years. If the Vantage shaft feels stiffer (like a standard shaft), 12.9 mm tip (like most standard shafts), has deflection comparable to the Z2 shaft, better grain matching, better lamination... then this will be the best LD shaft on the market. To be more forgiving than the 314^2 bc of the diameter but be as accurate as the Z^2. Yes the cost of $310 seems outrageous to some, but those players can go buy their $30-$60 standard shafts. Someone else commented that this is for the Asian market and they are partially correct - the Predator 314 FAT shaft was a hit overseas and this shaft will too. I commend Predator for trying to make improvements and pushing technology. Before predator, who else was doing this? no one, the market was all standard but Predator changed that. I'm excited to try the new shaft and to see how great it really is.
k:
