Quick Summary for those who don't want to read:
Schmelke's easy to work with, my cue plays way better than it should, it costs less than the lowest "good" production cue yet plays as well as any custom I've had.
Now that we got that out of the way, after owning cues from all over the range, I ended up settling with my Schon. Love it to death... but I've always been a fan of sneaky petes, and a fan of g-10 Pins. This stems from my first custom cue ever: a Pat Diveney butterfly splice with a g-10 radial pin. Also my cousin had a Cognoscenti and we used to hang in Joey's shop from time to time...he told me all about the pin and it fascinated me.
Anywho, I've always heard good things about Schmelke, but I never pulled the trigger. Back in 2011, I emailed them about making a butt to match a shaft I had, but I never followed through. Fast forward to a couple of months ago, I came across this post from HawaiianEye regarding his custom cue.
Up until then, i thought you could only change the joint pin, shaft taper, and wrap (along with adding buttcaps and joint collars) based on the website options. However I had no clue they really did any form of custom work. After reading the thread, I particularly liked how HawaiianEye dictated every measurement of the cue.
I ended up doing some more research via google and on this forum. Found a lot of posts containing custom made Schmelke orders and especially sneaky pete requests. The constant thread that united all the posts:
- Schmelke is great to deal with
- They can make pretty much anything
- Their prices are hard to beat
I made my decision to move forward, but I wanted to make sure I did this right. The first thing I did was go on the Schmelke site, picking out the components I wanted. The main two components were "ultra sneaky pete" purple heart blank, and g10 radial pin. Afterwards, I scoured az posts to find any diameter measurements I could and recorded everything on a spreadsheet.
Now I'm not a good player by any means, so what the heck would I know about diameters affecting play? Not much, but at the price I think it was worth the risk. Here are the measurements I ended up using and why...
Butt: 1.23"
Joint: .840"
Tip: 13mm
Taper: 12" Pro
Length: 57.5"
Weight: 19oz (give or take 0.5oz)
Butt Diameter - I've always liked the thinner butt on a schon and some predator cues. Coincidentally diameter measurements from these cues were plentiful with most of them being around 1.23
Joint: It seems a lot of aftermarket shafts use this diameter, so I wanted to keep it somewhat standard in case I wanted to swap shafts down the line.
Taper: I asked Dave Schmelke and this is what he advised. I wanted something stiff like my Schon. It seemed to be a 10-12" pro taper based on specs from Billiard Warehouse. At first I was going to just use the 8inch break taper they offered, but was told that may be too stiff to play with. Also I went with a triangle tip because I like hard tips.
Length: I asked for a 57.5" overall length split even. Joey Gold swears by that measurement. He told me 57" should be the real standard, but everyone's used to 58 now. I know that's all personal preference and opinions, but his cues did play well. This was an experiment after all. Also I did want to note that it was not split even, instead the shaft was .5" shorter...which means I could always bring it back to normal length with 29" shaft.
Weight: I like 19 oz :smile:
Next thing I did was gather a list with parts numbers to make the process as easy as possible when ordering.
With all this in mind, I was ready to pull the trigger if it was within my budget. I gave Schmelke a call on Black Wednesday around 10am, Dave picked up after a few rings and we chatted about the cue. His constant "yup, we can do that. yup, we can do that" eased any concerns I could've had. When he told me how much it would be, I pulled the trigger right away. I won't say how much I paid, but you can do a search for Custom Schmelke Sneakies and get a general idea.
So while this all happened, I anxiously awaited my new "project". This would be the first cue I've owned that was truly customized to my specs...and for all I know it could be shit. If it was, I have a new car cue. Though I was quoted a price, at the time I never received an invoice, and I imagine they were swamped with holiday orders. I was told it'd be about 3-4 weeks.
I received my cue this past Monday, so overall time if you take away shipping days and thanksgiving time off, my cue was made in 14 days.
I've put in a few days worth of play with it (maybe about 9 hours total so not a lot), but the cue plays very very well. In fact, I dare to say it plays better than some of the "Customs" my friend has. It's very stiff and doesn't vibrate much. It came in the exact weight I wanted of 19oz with the balance point at about 17". There are weight bolts inside because without them, it's about 15oz. I hard break and play with the same cue and it does both very well (8 and 9 ball player league scrub here). At this point I've benched my beloved set of my schon and bk1 and will lug along this thing in my 1x1 porper case
All in all, very very happy customer.
Here's a pic I downsized for this forum:
You can find higher resolution images of the cue here
Schmelke Sneaky Album
Schmelke's easy to work with, my cue plays way better than it should, it costs less than the lowest "good" production cue yet plays as well as any custom I've had.
Now that we got that out of the way, after owning cues from all over the range, I ended up settling with my Schon. Love it to death... but I've always been a fan of sneaky petes, and a fan of g-10 Pins. This stems from my first custom cue ever: a Pat Diveney butterfly splice with a g-10 radial pin. Also my cousin had a Cognoscenti and we used to hang in Joey's shop from time to time...he told me all about the pin and it fascinated me.
Anywho, I've always heard good things about Schmelke, but I never pulled the trigger. Back in 2011, I emailed them about making a butt to match a shaft I had, but I never followed through. Fast forward to a couple of months ago, I came across this post from HawaiianEye regarding his custom cue.
Up until then, i thought you could only change the joint pin, shaft taper, and wrap (along with adding buttcaps and joint collars) based on the website options. However I had no clue they really did any form of custom work. After reading the thread, I particularly liked how HawaiianEye dictated every measurement of the cue.
I ended up doing some more research via google and on this forum. Found a lot of posts containing custom made Schmelke orders and especially sneaky pete requests. The constant thread that united all the posts:
- Schmelke is great to deal with
- They can make pretty much anything
- Their prices are hard to beat
I made my decision to move forward, but I wanted to make sure I did this right. The first thing I did was go on the Schmelke site, picking out the components I wanted. The main two components were "ultra sneaky pete" purple heart blank, and g10 radial pin. Afterwards, I scoured az posts to find any diameter measurements I could and recorded everything on a spreadsheet.
Now I'm not a good player by any means, so what the heck would I know about diameters affecting play? Not much, but at the price I think it was worth the risk. Here are the measurements I ended up using and why...
Butt: 1.23"
Joint: .840"
Tip: 13mm
Taper: 12" Pro
Length: 57.5"
Weight: 19oz (give or take 0.5oz)
Butt Diameter - I've always liked the thinner butt on a schon and some predator cues. Coincidentally diameter measurements from these cues were plentiful with most of them being around 1.23
Joint: It seems a lot of aftermarket shafts use this diameter, so I wanted to keep it somewhat standard in case I wanted to swap shafts down the line.
Taper: I asked Dave Schmelke and this is what he advised. I wanted something stiff like my Schon. It seemed to be a 10-12" pro taper based on specs from Billiard Warehouse. At first I was going to just use the 8inch break taper they offered, but was told that may be too stiff to play with. Also I went with a triangle tip because I like hard tips.
Length: I asked for a 57.5" overall length split even. Joey Gold swears by that measurement. He told me 57" should be the real standard, but everyone's used to 58 now. I know that's all personal preference and opinions, but his cues did play well. This was an experiment after all. Also I did want to note that it was not split even, instead the shaft was .5" shorter...which means I could always bring it back to normal length with 29" shaft.
Weight: I like 19 oz :smile:
Next thing I did was gather a list with parts numbers to make the process as easy as possible when ordering.
With all this in mind, I was ready to pull the trigger if it was within my budget. I gave Schmelke a call on Black Wednesday around 10am, Dave picked up after a few rings and we chatted about the cue. His constant "yup, we can do that. yup, we can do that" eased any concerns I could've had. When he told me how much it would be, I pulled the trigger right away. I won't say how much I paid, but you can do a search for Custom Schmelke Sneakies and get a general idea.
So while this all happened, I anxiously awaited my new "project". This would be the first cue I've owned that was truly customized to my specs...and for all I know it could be shit. If it was, I have a new car cue. Though I was quoted a price, at the time I never received an invoice, and I imagine they were swamped with holiday orders. I was told it'd be about 3-4 weeks.
I received my cue this past Monday, so overall time if you take away shipping days and thanksgiving time off, my cue was made in 14 days.
I've put in a few days worth of play with it (maybe about 9 hours total so not a lot), but the cue plays very very well. In fact, I dare to say it plays better than some of the "Customs" my friend has. It's very stiff and doesn't vibrate much. It came in the exact weight I wanted of 19oz with the balance point at about 17". There are weight bolts inside because without them, it's about 15oz. I hard break and play with the same cue and it does both very well (8 and 9 ball player league scrub here). At this point I've benched my beloved set of my schon and bk1 and will lug along this thing in my 1x1 porper case
All in all, very very happy customer.
Here's a pic I downsized for this forum:
You can find higher resolution images of the cue here
Schmelke Sneaky Album
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