Are we seeing the end of wood cues?

naturalpoolplayer is clearly a limbo force to be reckoned with.

Never have I seen someone continually slip under the low bar that he sets anew with each post.
egashira-limbo.gif


kudos
 
Pretty much all sports equipment that was once made out of wood is now carbon fiber. I see it as the future, but i think a few things need to be addressed.

I like wraps, so I'm not sure can you put a wrap on a CF cue? Is it possible to cut out a channel in CF for a wrap?

Design wise we could always do paint, I also see people dipping things in decals too is another possibility. Plain cue's are just plain boring.

With this technology i would think we could have the possibility of having a truly adjustable cue with a weight and balance point.
 
A few random thoughts triggered by the OP. Pool is not tennis. Carbon fiber is not "superior" it is just different. There was a time when many thought aluminum or fiberglass cues were going to be the end of wood. There will always be an interest and a market for well crafted cues made from some of the worlds most beautiful woods. The increasing proliferation of carbon fiber has more to do with marketing than some overwhelming advantage over a quality wood butt and / or shaft. If you learn to play with wood you can be just as good as learning to playing with carbon. It's about learning to play. As tired as the adage is, It's not the arrow.......
 
Carbon fiber has been in baseball bats for 20 years. No way MLB could use them. That fiber breaks down and becomes like a trampoline. The more it's used the livelier it gets. College baseball had to suspend the use of them before somebody got hurt. Saw it for real. Had son a play in two college world series. Games were like 20 to 18. Crazy offense.
I don't like the hit in the carbon pool shafts. Meh. I'll happily stay in the natural player dipshit list. I vote tree branches.
 
What a troll post.

I like wood because each piece is natural and beautiful and it takes a certain type of craftsmanship to build a good cue. You take two cues that are built with similar construction methods and materials by two different makers and they can play and hit differently. Carbon is carbon is carbon. Every revo plays the same, which is nice too. Lots of people building half a cue these days and sticking an ld aftermarket shaft on it. There's skill in developing a shaft taper and cutting slowly over time. You see Eric Crisp and guys like that who match tone woods to harmonize. That's why people play with wood.

When you pick up a good cue, and I mean a special one, you can feel it. When you pick up a carbon predator it's engineered and a bit soulless if you will.
 
Podunker said:
Carbon fiber has been in baseball bats for 20 years. No way MLB could use them. That fiber breaks down and becomes like a trampoline. The more it's used the livelier it gets. College baseball had to suspend the use of them before somebody got hurt. Saw it for real. Had son a play in two college world series. Games were like 20 to 18. Crazy offense.
I don't like the hit in the carbon pool shafts. Meh. I'll happily stay in the natural player dipshit list. I vote tree branches.
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Both cf and aluminum bats can exhibit a trampoline effect. Its not a result of the cf breaking down. Composite bats used in college ball now have limits on the ball's speed when struck. As for cues, cf doesn't play much different. Big plus's are its durability, slickness, warp resistance. More of a ownership benefit than in how it plays. I've tried a bunch of them and am still using my Mezz HybridPro(orig version). Its solid wood with a cf rod in it. Great shaft.
 
Das Cue-Boot said:
This sounds like as much a religious discussion as anything we could do in the billiards world except maybe chalk.

I'm siding with thenaturalpoolplayer from a playing standpoint. I learned to play tennis on wooden racquets, now you might find a few on thrift shops and walls and I work with a company selling carbon fiber racquets to high school players. I learned to ski on wooden cross country skis, and listened to a generation of Scandinavians tell me how they'd never switch, meanwhile I and every other racer use carbon fiber honeycomb core skis that outperform wood in every way imaginable. Look at the Tour de France bikes and tell me how many aren't carbon fiber.

Right now the carbon fiber shafts are on the expensive side, but it is only a matter of time before the price drops and every quality shaft is carbon fiber. As for the cue butts, I love the artistry, and they will surely survive for quite some time with the elaborate wood inlays for show, but for dough, they'll go carbon fiber also.

And don't get me going about vinyl records. I used to write FIRs and IIRs in the signal processing world, and we're perfectly capable of digitizing scratches. static, 60 Hz hum and all the other background nonsense that comes with vinyl. I have my entire music library on something the size of my keychain instead of a cabinet as well.
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Comparing tennis racquets to cues is ridiculous. The strength and rigidity of cf helps a racquet because of how the strings load the frame. The strength and rigidity don't help a shaft. The weight savings doesn't help, either.
 
thenaturalpoolplayer said:
I never understood all the emphasis put on the inlays and wraps and stuff with pool cues either? What's the point? Carbon fiber, no wrap is the way to go. Anyway, I see the pros are finally catching up to technology.
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Super smooth sanded and pressed irish linen or silk wrap is the bee's knees. No wrap (looks good) leather wrap (looks good ) rubber wrap (looks bad) but they are all too grippy. Linen and silk allow for a slip stroke when u want it. (U can kindof pull it off with real cork too) ....also no wrap and leather kinda feel crappy if it's real humid in the room or your hands get danky..
Wood shafts you can get the exact taper diameter weight length ferrule material type and length ....to a T. U can't do that with carbon. They are all cookie cutter. I have wood shafts that are 50 yrs old and still dead strait with no nicks and dents. Why do I need carbon? My stuff not going bad anytime soon. Also carbon fiber has stagnated the price of good custom wood shafts. Win win for me. U can get a bad ass wood shaft made for 150 bucks from most cuemakers
 
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thenaturalpoolplayer said:
I personally was the first to jump onto the carbon fiber cues well before any of the pros started adopting them. I found this weird because carbon fiber cues are superior in every way imo, but pros seem so attached to their cues they were reluctant to switch over. I can go from deflection to no deflection, from cue to cue etc without much affect on my overall game...but obviously I prefer to play with just one type which is the REVO btw. I prefer the butt and shaft be carbon fiber not just the shaft.

I never understood all the emphasis put on the inlays and wraps and stuff with pool cues either? What's the point? Carbon fiber, no wrap is the way to go. Anyway, I see the pros are finally catching up to technology.
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There are wood shafts out there that are lower deflection than carbon fiber shafts. For those of us that take immaculate care of our equipment, I completely disagree with you. The feel / feedback I get from a wood shaft is far superior in my opinion to that of a carbon fiber shaft.
 
ChrisinNC said:
There are wood shafts out there that are lower deflection than carbon fiber shafts. For those of us that take immaculate care of our equipment, I completely disagree with you. The feel / feedback I get from a wood shaft is far superior in my opinion to that of a carbon fiber shaft.
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Which was my main reason for purchasing the Exceed shaft. The best of both worlds engineered by Mezz. Carbon fiber insert within a high quality wood shaft...

Still loving the Exceed shaft.
 
Listen I'm 22 years old and I much prefer wood cues and shafts for their feel and hit. I don't care too much about deflection and it doesn't really affect how well I play after I get adjusted to a cue. So when I'm 90 I'll be sitting in a stool with my old wooden stick preaching to the kiddos how pool was better back in the day before all these high tech cues, and be proud of it
 
Quesports said:
Which was my main reason for purchasing the Exceed shaft. The best of both worlds engineered by Mezz. Carbon fiber insert within a high quality wood shaft...

Still loving the Exceed shaft.
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Mezz makes good stuff I have the 900 700 expro, wx alpha 30 inch, and alpha hybrid ,,. I'm just wanting to play with macro on new phone.
Hard to photograph but good tight straight grain. U don't see good slow growth maple in many production shafts anymore. All my mezz shafts are pretty damn good quality wood
 

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Nothing against CF shafts here, I just haven't gotten around to spending my gun money on one, yet.

But I call B/S on this troll. Is this the reincarnation of Justin?
 
RDeca said:
Mezz makes good stuff I have the 900 700 expro, wx alpha 30 inch, and alpha hybrid ,,. I'm just wanting to play with macro on new phone.
Hard to photograph but good tight straight grain. U don't see good slow growth maple in many production shafts anymore. All my mezz shafts are pretty damn good quality wood
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My Mezz forearm, did I get lucky or all are Mezz like these?
 

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End of wooden shaft? for playability and consistency maybe, I see CF shafts playing a big role, but as long as people are collecting cues, wood cues will always be made. Can't compare tennis rackets to pool cues, no one collects tennis rackets as there is no "Art" in tennis rackets as compared to a finely made pool cue...
 
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