I am looking at CF shafts and wondering if I should buy one for my Samara cues (I have two) to replace the Samsara LD shaft, or buy one to fit my Scruggs. How much do people think the butt really matters when using a CF shaft? Thanks!
Cue versus Butt?
- Thread starter sgengaro86
- Start date
The butt does not really matter with any shaft does not matter what it's made of as far as how the shaft performs. Butt is there to basically hold the shaft, for weight, balance, hit feel, and looks. Put those in whatever order you personally want them in :wink:
Butt is the body, shaft is the brain, the body is there just to keep the brain working which is the important part. The only reason you breathe, eat, work out, buy clothing is to keep the brain alive (ignoring anything humans made up like fashion, comfort, cuisine, etc..), the reason for the butt is so the shaft can poke at the cueballs and make them in the pockets.
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Not quite, the car is much much more complex in what it does and how it's designed. The point of the car is not to move the engine, the engine is there to move the car, and you need the physics of air resistance and grip and cornering there for other components to deal with.. There is nothing you can put in the butt that will change how the cueball reacts or if you can make the ball. It may help a person feel comfortable shooting a ball but how the cueball moves off the tip is all shaft. Putting on nice tires will make a car corner better, wind resistance affects top speed and handing, what exactly does butt construction do for the actual performance? The butt is basically nothing but a fancy holder for the shaft. Now if the cue was made to fly through the air as a whole or you use it like a bat where the butt was the thing that contacted the ball, then butt construction may be something important. All you need in a butt is for it to be comfy to hold and move. Take out all the things except pure numbers of what the cue does to the cueball when it strikes it, there is nothing the butt does past weight, which is controlled my your muscles as much as anything. There is a reason good players look at a house cue tip and shaft first before checking anything else. Soon as I see people look at the weight numbers, dump 5 cues on a table and start rolling them around, I know they are not really players. If the butt mattered much we would all be examining it as much as the shaft. But all we care about is the balance and feel of it. You don't want splinters in your palms for example.
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By that logic, we would play with hollowed out cheap butts or maybe even disposable butts. How does the shaft help one make the ball and the butt not? Are they two distinct parts working independently during cueball contact?
First thing I would do is find a place were you can try the shaft you are thinking of buying, as the CF Shafts are not cheap.
Try before you buy, you just might not find the Shaft of your dreams, is not your cup of tea, or as Dream as expected.
Try before you buy, you just might not find the Shaft of your dreams, is not your cup of tea, or as Dream as expected.
Exactly right, we could.
They act together when it comes to the hit feel and balance, the butt does nothing when it comes to how the shaft deflects. Hit feel and balance does not make a ball. It may make it easier for you personally to play better than with something crappy, but if you stick a bunch of shafts on a wood dowel and stick it in a robot that shoots balls, it will make them the same with the same shaft as with a black boar butt.
Answer the question yourself after thinking about it, how does the butt help to make the ball past acting as a holder for the shaft? What hits the cueball? What affects how the cueball reacts? Want the cueball to go further, hit it harder with your muscles. How much the cueball deflects so you adjust aim is based on the shaft. What does the butt do? By the time the butt even knows you hit the ball the ball is probably off the tip already and any energy passed to it is already passed to it. Dr Dave I'm sure can chime in there LOL
So if you, or anyone else thinks, the butt does something to the cueball that makes it go straighter or less straight you need to answer how and what.
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OK so I have to repeat myself but here I go anyhow: Please tell me : You mentioned a Tim Scruggs cue that you want to toss the original sfhats for a CF shaft- right?
So a cue maker like
Scruggs spends a lifetime planning, designing and executing all of his cue making/ woodworking/ pool playing skills into a custom cue where he has ordered the finest shaft wood he could find, seasoned it to perfection, turned it to the optimum taper that he knows, pairs it oh so perfectly to a cue butt that took him equal amounts of skill, time, experience, and execution.
NOW you want to toss the Scruggs shaft for something else in hopes of WHAT- may I ask? MY guess is that You want to play better- right? Want some free advice my friend- save your money ( to quote a line from a famous movie) Unless you are a pro who has exhausted every means of improvement via practice, instruction, competition, experience, etc. - you are not ready for a new shaft as a way to improve- you already have more than adequate equipment to perform at your present optimum level. There are no shortcuts!!!
So a cue maker like
Scruggs spends a lifetime planning, designing and executing all of his cue making/ woodworking/ pool playing skills into a custom cue where he has ordered the finest shaft wood he could find, seasoned it to perfection, turned it to the optimum taper that he knows, pairs it oh so perfectly to a cue butt that took him equal amounts of skill, time, experience, and execution.
NOW you want to toss the Scruggs shaft for something else in hopes of WHAT- may I ask? MY guess is that You want to play better- right? Want some free advice my friend- save your money ( to quote a line from a famous movie) Unless you are a pro who has exhausted every means of improvement via practice, instruction, competition, experience, etc. - you are not ready for a new shaft as a way to improve- you already have more than adequate equipment to perform at your present optimum level. There are no shortcuts!!!
I be feelin ya, sistah.
It does not matter
Mikemosconi I love the response. Thanks. I will mess around with the the shafts and compare to my LD. Thanks.
I think we are looking at this from different perspectives. My view was to offer an opinion as to how the butt affects the feel of the cue. I agree with the general science behind your position. I am not certain how the OP is viewing this. As a cue collector, my default thought is normally to weigh in how butts affect feel.
Great responses. Essentially the butt impacts feel, balance, etc and the shaft is critical for deflection.
Well going by the reply and this "How does the shaft help one make the ball and the butt not?" it sounded like you were saying the butt actually works to make the ball.
Soon as you change the shaft from a custom cue you pretty much changed the cue and may as well be using something much cheaper outside of looks and feel. In fact my travel setup probably has 80% ore more of the hit feel and shot making as my favorite cues and shafts and costs 1/20th of the price.
There are just too many changes to really have an answer that everyone will agree on, you do something as small as changing brand and type of tip and you could change as much of the hit feel as replacing the whole cue or one with different woods. That's what makes any answer about what is the "best" blah blah in pool almost irrelevant past something like the balls or the table that have known good characterstics. For example you want to have a certain speed and angle bounce off the rails, you want the pockets to accept certain shots, the balls should be a standard size and tolerance to size and weight. Like baseball, all the baseballs are the same, the playing field has specific standards, but the bats players use can vary from player to player (withing certain rules like cues).
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Think of it in terms of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
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You are very welcome!
I understand the shaft is the key component to the deflection and how the cue ball reacts. My question was that given the feel a CF shaft brings (stiffness, little vibration, etc) does it lessen the important of the butt to the overall feel of the cue? My guess is it does and that the real key to the butt (outside of looks of you care) is the weight and balance of the cue.
Not wanting to be facetious, I am not so sure what you are saying. The gists of your posts appear (at least to me) so say that the butt does not impact how we play pool. But one of your posts says that you get ~80% of the feel and play with one of your favorite shafts on a less favored butt. How can that be if the butt does not affect the playability of a cue?
Perhaps a machine would not know the difference between butts once programmed for a shaft/tip combination. But I would think that same machine could be programmed to successfully make shots with any shaft/tip combination. So, does that mean that shafts and tips don’t make a difference?
Players are not machines. The feel of specific combinations impact our confidence for making shots. You say that if the butts are different, we have to be able to describe in detail why. But at the same time you say they don’t make a difference, you also say that you have favorite cues that play 25% better than your “travel setup” combos and you don’t describe in what way or why.
Your experience drives your purchasing decisions and my experience drives mine. I have read repeated assertions that the butt does not impact play and I own two cues that based on weight and balance points should provide equally satisfying experiences as my two favorite cues. There is not one construction technique that is essentially in providing me with that feel I consider special. But when I am playing with one that I find special, my confidence level rises substantially and more often I know I am going to make a shot even before I bend over to set up. The other factor in my experience (for reasons I don’t understand) is that my favorite playing cues repeatedly come from the same cuemakers. I cannot quantify why their cues feel different, but for me, the difference is real.
