Cuetec Cynergy in-depth review

Kimmo H.

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
I decided to give carbon fiber shafts another go even though I didn't grow to like the 12.4mm Revo enough to keep it.
I really liked the stiffnes of CF shaft but the unnatural feel of the Revo eventually made me give up on it.
There are now other manufacturers making CF shafts and they all have their own qualities and characteristics. After studying a bit on everything I could find online, reviews by users, haters, likers and manufacturers themselves I settled on a Cuetec Cynercy as the shaft that I would buy and check out. As I play with a Mezz cue I was a little skeptical of buying a regular 5/16x14 Cynergy for my United joint cue as I know that it should fit on the butt, but there would much more play in the joint with a regular thread. When I saw Cynergy shafts with the Mezz joints available at Seyberts I just had to get one. I bought the United joint Cynergy, with a Zan tip upgrade on monday and had the shaft in my hands by the end of the week, so kudos to Seyberts and UPS for a swift delivery and service.

The delivery was packaged well and after opening the box that the stuff was delivered in I was instantly impressed with the Cuetecs shaft packaging. It's a stylish box that gives a nice first impression that you are holding something premium in your hands. It also protects the contents well, there is no need to worry about receiving a damaged shaft in there. Up on opening the display box there is some extra padding on top, underwich lies the shaft itself with a joint protector, 10 cleaning towels and a Cynergy patch. The instruction label is printed on the inside on the lid that includes the usual maintenance and warranty info.

Some pictures to show what is being reviewed :smile:

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The shaft itself was a pleasant surprise when I first picked it up. It doesn't feel quite as much like plastic as the Revo did in my opinion. The surface is very smooth, joint work clean and the ferrule to shaft transition is perfect as it should be. Seyberts put on a Zan Grip hard on my shaft, and the installation is very well done. I did shape the tip a little to suit my preference but that is to be expected when someone else does the installation. I screwed the shaft on my EC7-C Mezz butt and it fits nice and snug. Very little play in the thread, collar and pilot diameters match the cue well. There is small chamfer on the shafts face, wich is a nice feature as the joint diameters often vary by 0.1mm or so. It doesn't feel quite as tight on the last couple of turns as the Mezz shafts do but the fit is excellent none the less. Mezz shafts have a plastic sleeve behind the thread insert that makes the fit feel extra tight, I suspect the Cynergy either doensn't have that at all or it is a little tiny bit larger in diameter.
Cynergys diameter at the joint collar measures at 21.38mm, ferrule is 12.50 and the shaft weights 3.81oz.

So on the outside everything seems to be in order. The real question is how does it play? I must admit that I was expecting to be disappointed, as I was afraid that the same unnatural feel and weird behaviour would be there just like they were with the Revo.
I started out with a drill I'm very familiar with (Darren Appletons Groups drill) and things started out okay as I cleared the drill with relative ease. The hit of the Cynergy shaft surprised me the most as it feels very pleasant, even when it is a rather stiff shaft being carbon fiber. The taper is excellent and very close to the specs I have made my own shafts to. It is a long pro taper with a smooth transition to tapering up towards the joint. I will post some taper data in the next post.
As I stated earlier, I was expecting for something to annoy me, feel off or to atleast sound weird to me. With that in mind I proceeded to test the shafts performance in various types of shots, some of wich I only feel comfortable with the select few maple shafts I have made or bought earlier. I tried maximum draw, force follow, touchy drag shots and also the very soft shots with a ton of side to cheat the angle, all of wich I was executing surprisingly well and without anything I could complain about. There were no pingy sounds, even with a hard tip, no miscues or lack of control. At this point I had to admit to myself that this might be a decent shaft after all.

As I have played with solid maple shafts for a rather long time I have also adjusted to a degree of deflection. That meant that deflection drills were definitely in place with a new shaft, considered by many to be LD and so I placed balls on the long rails, playing 3 rail position to move up the table. A drill that I have found to be a good measure of deflection the way that it affects my game the most. I expected the Cynergy to be a little lower deflection than the shaft I was using before and that prediction was correct. That said the difference is easily manageable, especially in a drill setup where the same type of shot is repeated over and over again.
I then reset the same drill after a few clearances and changed the CB path to 2 rail with low outside spin. No issues there either, I was able to make the balls without much effort with both types of shots coming from a 12.2mm solid maple shaft.
Drills are a good baseline but the real difference comes in gameplay, with shots that require varying degrees of spin, speed and angle.
It was time to start playing instead of practicing, that way I could get an honest idea of how the shafts works in relation to what my mind expects of it in various situations. Played the ghost in 8 & 9 ball, some 14.1 to top it off and after several hours of play I was getting along with the new shaft surprisingly well. I didn't manage to find any shots that would feel weird or act in an unusual way. The CB did what I was able to do with it. I am far from a pro so of course I'm missing shots and messing up position a lot compared to an elite player but by my standards I was playing very well despite the equipment change. Not once did I feel like the cue felt weird or that it couldn't take the power of the shot. That to me is a great thing for a shaft. When I miss or fail otherwise, it feels unusually certain that my stance, grip or alignement was off. The cause, in my opinion is that the Cynergy feels pretty much the same on every shot, despite force or spin and that gives me the mental edge to give more thought to where I actually went wrong rather than feeling if the shaft gave in under force, vibrated oddly or something. It is bit difficult to explain, especially when english is not my native language.
Long story short, Cynergy feels great and that consistent feeling feeds my confidence when playing.

To sum things up a little; Cynergy is a shaft that has high emphasis on feel. They advertise so, and they delivered their claims with the end product. The shafts deflection, or CB squirt is higher than a Revo by my experience. Extensive test results regarding deflection between CF shafts can be found on YouTube and on Dr. Daves websites so I'll not be repeating those test results here in this review.
I really like the way this shaft plays. It is very predictable for me to use and the touch that was missing from the Revo is definitely there with the Cynergy. I'm a big fan of old school maple shafts so writing the following sentence feels a little hardcore; Cynergy is one of the nicest feeling shafts I've ever shot with, and certainly the best performing one. And I've had the pleasure to own a wide variety of cues and shafts, both production and custom.
Sound of hit has a little higher tone than a solid maple shaft but not even close to a tingy sound. It sounds crisp, but not hollow, even with the hard tip on.

Feel isn't that big of a factor to all players so with that in mind there a few other things I'd like to bring up about the Cynergy. First of all the power transfer. This shaft isn't quite as hardcore like the Revo for example in my opinion, and that probably comes from the little bit more flex in the shaft. This of course means different things to different people. I find my speed control better playing with the Cuetec, yet at the same time I haven't come across a shot in real game play where I would have needed any more firepower than what I can deliver with the Cynergy. It is fine line though and can only be a comfort thing, but that's still my opinion when comparing the two based on CB travel distances.
Cynergy takes powerful shots well. It doensn't give in or flex excessively even when forcing the CB to my skill limit.
Having a short ferrule is great in my opinion. It gives a familiar view and the tip replacement is easier.

So there is a lot of good obviously about the shaft in my opinion, so surely there has to be the negative to say about aswell?
Well in my opinion the drawbacks I can think of concern carbon fiber in general, regardless of manufacturer. The shaft stays clean for a relativelely long time without any cleaning, talking about several days of play, but once it starts to show up the shafts surface shows dirt like it is greasy, wich it likely is from the oil transfer from skin. The oil type dirt shows up more on CF than it does on wood. It's easy to clean with a quick wipe with the cleaning pad or any rag with a bit of pure alcohol though, giving the shaft back its flawless smoothness.
Secondly there is the scratch issue known to us all. If you happen to scratch the shaft, there is basically nothing you can do to fix it. That said my shaft is still flawless, despite my bad habit of using the shaft to gather balls on the table back to the rack after a game.
And finally the only shaft specific complaint is of a visual nature. There seems to be a barely noticeable seam running through the shafts side lengthwise. It can only be seen by "mirroring" it under a table light, but it is still there. There are quite a few stories of several other CF shafts aswell with the same thing. I'm not sure what the cause of that seam is. It was quite difficult to get this to show properly on pictures, that is how small of a defect it is, but it still needs to be mentioned in my opinion. Below is a picture where I got the seam to show up on.

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These are minor things, just about maintenance, so with everything in mind I'd say that the Cynergy is a very good shaft that brings a lot to the table with very little drawbacks.

After playing with the Cynergy exclusively for a couple of weeks I tried to go back to my old shaft. Usually it feels like home returning to the trysty servant that has been used in the tightest match ups, record runs etc. It has been like that every time I've tried to change equipment from this particular shaft. This time it didn't though, I instantly wanted to back to the Cynergy. Sure I still like the old shaft, but the Cynergy just plays and feels better, there is no way around that. The more I've played with it, the more I've grown to like it.
I've also noticed a slight improvement on my performance at the table. Not a drastic change, but still clearly noticeable. It can be the result of putting in the extra table time testing the shaft, but I'd say that it comes from the improved confidence when stroking the ball. Regardless of reason, it sure is nice to be playing to the best of my abilities.


I try my best to make my reviews as unbiased and honest as I can, so I will clarify that I'm not sponsored by Cuetec in any way, nor am I given any financial benefit for this review. I bought the shaft for my personal use with my own money and thought to share my thoughts about it with the public, hoping that it could be useful for someone thinking of buying a new shaft for themselves.

If there is anything you'd like to know and wasn't mentioned in this post, feel free to comment in this thread or send me a PM and I'll try to help you out.
 

painfullyslow

Registered
Thank you for putting out such a detailed and thorough writeup! Since this is a review I would like to add a few thoughts if you do not mind.

I purchased my Cynergy shaft 3 days ago, coming from a LD wood shaft. I chose the Cynergy over the others out there for three factors: It has a white ferrule, it came in a size that I wanted (12.5mm), and it has a little more deflection than some of the other offerings.

I know this seems crazy to some people, but a certain amount of deflection is a GOOD thing (at least to me anyway) and moving to the CF shaft from my LD wood took all of about two hours of play.

Some people feel that having a white ferrule is not necessary but for me, I missed it when it was not there so it is a good perk to have it available on this shaft (in my opinion).

I echo all of the other thoughts you made about quality and the feel of the cue with one excepton: I purchased it with the original sniper tip on it which I did not care for. I played with it for a few hours to give it a fair shake and then swapped it for my tip of choice: Kamui clear black in medium and immediately it felt worlds better.

This is not a plug for a certain tip, merely mentioning that if you put whatever tip you currently play with (and I assume like) on this shaft, you will enjoy it a lot more.

Again, thank you so much for such a thorough job detailing what I believe is a great product (and I am an old timer and swore I would never jump on the CF 'fad'. I was wrong.)
 

Kimmo H.

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
^ I too hate the Sniper tip that comes standard on the shaft, and that is the reason why I had it replaced by Seyberts with a Zan Grip hard tip. Didn't even want to bother with the Sniper as I've never liked it on other shafts.
The Zan is a very nice feeling, grippy and easy to maintain tip that I like along with the Milkduds that I make for myself :smile:
 

gregnice37

Bar Banger, Cue Collector
Silver Member
I wasn't a fan of the cynergy out of the 7 CF shafts I tried. I rank it at the bottom of all 7. I'm curious as to why you didn't go for the ignite being that you're a mezz guy?
 

Kimmo H.

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
^
The Cuetec appealed to me with its tip size, ferrule and taper, so I thought to give a competing product a chance aswell :smile: I like it obviously so it was worth a giving a shot at :embarrassed2:

I will be giving the Ignite a try aswell, but they under a rock at the moment. I should be receiving one probably next month if everything works out. From what I've read it is a step towards Revo feelwise but time will tell when I get my own hands on one.
 

9ballhasbeen

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Cynergy 11.8

Just got my issue of Billiards Digest, looks like there will be an 11.8mm Cynergy coming out later this month. Date says 6-18-2020.
 

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Kimmo H.

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
^ Nice! I think it will be a hit and of course a welcome addition to the CF market.

It is also time to give one last update regarding the Cynergy I've had the pleasure of owning. For once this part is easy as pie, due to the fact that I feel exactly the same about the shaft as I did first reviewing it. It plays great, feels good and simply works well for me. I do miss the maple shafts aesthetics some times and play a couple racks with my old shaft every now and then but if I'm seriously playing or practicing it is always the Cynergy on my cue.
It has started to show some signs of wear near the joint where the finish has worn down a couple inches, just like it does on maple shafts. It doesn't really matter and only makes the transition from the clearcoated joint collar to the brushed CF finish a little more visible as it no longer smoothly fades like it did when new. Even if it wore down all the way to the collar like this it wouldn't matter to me and I don't think it will as my follow through isn't quite that extreme :thumbup: It's now worn to the same exact spot as all my other shafts so I'm pretty confident that its going to be like this for quite some time.


If the shaft doesn't surprisingly explode on me soon I will have to conclude my review as positively as I started it. The shaft is nice, comfortable and so far it seems to hold up well even when I also break with it most of the time. I'm a happy customer :smile:
 

Kimmo H.

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
I forgot to add the taper measurements in my earlier posts but here they are.

Point of measurement in cm, measured from the tip towards the joint.

0cm - 12.5mm
10cm - 12.5mm
20cm - 12.5mm
30cm - 12.5mm
35cm - 12.6mm
40cm - 13.0mm
45cm - 14.3mm
50cm - 15.6mm
55cm - 16.9mm
60cm - 18.4mm
65cm - 19.8mm
 
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