When I started playing, early 2000's, many of the older players still had 80's-90's Meuccis. They had the whippy shafts and some even sanded their new shafts down, so they'd be even more whippy. On the tables I played back then, those cues where awesome, and I actually ended up buying a Meucci myself. The tables usually had kind of dead rails, big pockets. I remember one pool hall had Simonis 760 cloth that was so worn that it was literally paper thin in places and somehow hadn't ripped, others had slower cloths. The best players were power strokers.
Nowadays, the situation is reversed. Rails are super springy, pocket are tight, cloths are lightening fast and changed every year and everyone wants stiffer and stiffer shafts. The power strokers don't seem to have much of an advantage, and nobody has Meucci shafts, at least not the old kind.
I dug my old (slightly broken) Meucci cue out of the closet and played with it. It's actually not bad at all. But very different from what is fashionable today. Tried to hit with a friends Revo right after and more different cues do not exist, I believe. Night and day different. Playing with the old "mooch" gave me a nice nostalgic feeling, even asked for the old Aramith standard ball set they have behind the counter. Good times.
