OK so I've been doing a lot of thinking on this topic. For a while now.
First - let's clear a few assumptions:
- 1. No matter what tip you choose - they get harder with repeated use.
- 2. Tips play better towards the end of their life
- 3. Not all hard tips are created equal
You may disagree, but I find it a fairly common theme with players who hang on to a tip when it is nearly time to change it because it plays really well. This assumption can be debated but, its based on anecdotal experience. I happen to agree quite a bit - in fact I'd almost rather buy a new shaft than re-tip a shaft when the tip is near the end of life.
I am less willing to debate #1 above.
With consideration to these two assumption, I theorize that the reason for #2 is that the tip is at it's
hardest.
Taking this further in respect to #1... I theorize that if you start soft or medium, as you use the tip and wear it down, you are continuously getting used to increasing levels of hardness.
Taking both of these theories together -
my humble hypothesis is that using a hard tip is better.
- - You won't need to continuously get used to increasing levels of hardness (with a pressed tip)
- - You will have better shot consistency
- - You will have longer tip life
- - No mushrooming
I personally recommend Elkmasters but they play soft unless you press them. Once pressed to a hard tip they maintain that hardness for the life of the tip.
Triangles play well too - but not as good as a pressed elkmaster IMHO.
Elks and Triangles hold chalk extremely well, never glaze over, never delaminate, and as long as you select an elkmaster or a triangle without any "scars" in the leather on the back you'll have a tip with 1 layer of consistency all the way through.
Layered tips are non-sense. But hardness factors listed above still apply.
My .02
While I think your observation that tip hardness changes with use is largely correct, I think other parts of your hypothesis and your conclusion as a whole fall apart for several reasons. To help illustrate why let me make up and use an imaginary tip hardness scale from 1-100 based on how tips feel and play (not to be confused with and does not in any way correlate with the actual commonly used tip hardness scale based on durometer readings). Soft tips might be roughly in the 1-35 range, lets say mediums are roughly in the 36-65 range, and hard tips are roughly in the 66-100 range.
For most tips (and in general the harder they are the more this probably holds true), I don't think they change all that much in hardness from the beginning of their life until the end of their life. We just happen to be fairly sensitive about our preferences and ability to differentiate small differences in tip hardness. Take a Triangle tip for example. It starts its life at say around a 45 hardness (it is well within the medium
feel range regardless of what official tip charts will say its durometer hardness is), and ends its life at say about a 48 hardness. While an experienced player will notice that amount of change, and could absolutely prefer one end of that range over the other, it really wasn't some massive change in the scheme of things, but rather we are just pretty perceptive and sensitive to fairly small changes in hardness.
Sniper tips for example probably start their life at about a 48, and end their life at about a 51. It just so happens that I like Triangle tips ok when they are new (45), but absolutely love them when they are at the end of their life and near the ferrule (48). It also so happens that I like Sniper tips pretty well when they are brand new (48), but find them to be just ok at best as they near the end of their life and are nearer the ferrule (51). To me this suggests that the absolute ideal tip hardness for me is somewhere about a 48, although anything from about 45-50 is decent to me even though it isn't quite perfect (but I think it may actually get a bit more complicated than this as I will go into in a bit).
Your conclusion that you should just use a hard tip since its range of tip hardness change will be less over the course of its life just doesn't make any sense whatsoever to me. Sure, a 70 hardness tip may have less range of change over its life and may never get harder 71 for a change of only 1, but I hate 70 (and 71) hardness tips. I like a 48 hardness tip and can deal with the immediate range close to that number a whole lot better, even if it changes a little more, than I could ever deal with something significantly harder, even if it changes less, because the closer to 48 the better.
I think your assumption that we always prefer tips at the end of their life is wrong (although anecdotal evidence suggests this is more common than preferring full height brand new tips). I think your assumption that the reason we prefer tips at the end of their life and nearer the ferrule because they are harder, and therefore it must be that we like harder tips, is also wrong.
It seems to me that most experienced players have a hardness AND and height preference for tips. While tip height can have an impact on perceived hardness, I'm not so sure that is the only or perhaps even the main reason for our having a specific height preference for a specific tip. I wonder if it has to do with amount of compression/give of the tip that occurs at impact or maybe something else. While the amount of compression is closely related to and heavily influenced by the tip hardness, I don't think they are the same thing or that the relationship between them is necessarily linear.
I tend to think the reason I like a Triangle at the end of its life when it is at a 48 hardness is not just a function of its hardness level and that the end of its life just happens to be when it hits the ideal hardness level for me (48), but rather that is when my ideal preferences for tip height AND tip hardness intersect and are both perfectly met.
It is also likely that our tip height and hardness preferences can change a bit for different shafts. A harder hitting shaft may need a softer tip to get the overall hit and feel we desire, or vice versa for examples. At the end of the day there appear to me to be a number of factors (shaft type/taper, tip hardness, tip height etc), each having some influence on things and even on each other, and there is a certain combination of these things that when tweaked perfectly makes the feel and hit as good as it can get, to us.
the old man Bob Meucci on tips:
https://youtu.be/FCMBV_yI_Tw
Half of what he says in that video (and he says a lot of things) is false.
