> Am I the only player here that has played with the same cue for over 10 years? In the 14 years since I've bought my Schon,I've hit balls with probably 500 other cues,from a wide spectrum of cuemakers/manufacturers. In all that time,I've only seen 10-15 that I felt hit as good,and probably 5 of those were Schons from the same time period,and similar build,meaning all but one of them were the panto-style,only one of them had the spliced points. The spliced one was a early R-16,basically a 6 point version of my cue. Oddly enough,the other 4 Schons I thought hit as good or better than mine all had more ivory in them,even though inlays don't affect the hit much if at all. All of them had ivory ferrules. The others were a plain 4 point Szamboti,a late 80's high end Joss,an early 90's Joss West,and the twin to the Black Boar that Francisco Bustamante won the 1993 PBT Championship with,along with a Gilbert,Searing,3 different Cogs,Tony Watson's ivory/turquoise Josey,and several different red-dot Bludworth cues. In just about every case except the Josey,Cogs,and Bludworths,the common thread was the piloted stainless joint and ivory ferrules. I've played with about 20 different Southwests and several old Kersenbrocks,and liked about 5 of them,all of these had the old Micarta ferrules. Out of the 3 Bushkas I've played with,only the steel jointed one hit well,the 2 ivory jointed ones felt like something was broke inside the cue,cause it vibrated weird and made all kinds of racket,nothing like the healthy "plink" of steel and ivory. I'm not saying at all that there are not other cues that hit/play well at all,just that these cues I mentioned were the ones that I would replace my Schon with based on playability. I imagine if I had 10-15k a year or more to spend on cues that were just going to sit up in a display case I'd have a rather large collection,but as far as what feels and works best for me,I'll stick with what I have until someone puts something in my hand that hits better or I make one that hits better. Tommy D.