TheBook said:
Take 20 to 30 cues that are constructed the same and all weight the same. They have the same wrap, taper, tip and tip size.
Each cue has a different type of joint and ferrule that are covered over with a film so you cannot tell if the joints are ivory, metal, etc and same with the ferrules. There would be wood to wood, piloted, fllat face, every type of joint with pin sizes and threads there are. Do you think that you could pick out the difference and end up with the combination that you think you prefer to play with? For example you may prefer a flat face phenolic joint a ivory ferrule. Do you think you could pick that combination out in a blind test?
What if you the combination turned out to be something completely different than what you thought you liked or are currently playing with; would you change to that combination?
Here is the text from a test that John McChesney performed a while back
Reprint:
Here's something interesting we tried in 1991:
At an event we had 16 cues with the butt, joint and the ferrules
covered with masking tape...then numbered.
No one could "see" if the cue was a steel, plastic or wood joint (as in a
Pete), nor
detect by the style of ferrule.
We had 70 players...each hit balls with the cues throughout the weekend.
The results:
Of nearly 800 attempts over the time period, the players guessed wrong
about what type joint was in the cue more than 7 out of 10 times.
A top pro (Meucci staffer) happened to be there, having done an exhibition
and the cue
he liked the most during the attempts:
He thought was surely a Meucci, plastic joint when in reality it was an
older
Adams with a piloted steel joint; and additionally guessed the Meucci he
shot with as a
cue with a steel joint.
Again, I maintain that cues with different joint materials may sound
differently;
may be balanced differently, but what is "hit" ?
Doesn't "hit" have to do with all the senses:
Vibration (feel), sound, balance, etc.
What is a "soft" hit? What is a "hard" hit? (what does this mean, if not
the sound the
cue makes upon impact, or are people ref. to the vibration in the butt?)
Does a hard hit vibrate more and make a different sound?
A soft hit vibrate less with a different sound?
I maintain that the primary criteria that differentiates one cue from
another begins with:
>The tip (soft, med or hard)
>The shaft diameter and density of the wood
>The taper (or stiffness of the shaft)
To this day, I still don't believe the joint has much to do with the
reaction of the cueball
off the shaft, rather it is the 3 aforementioned that have far more bearing
on how a cue
plays than anything else.
Remember, what makes the predator shaft play differently is what is located
at the tip,
inside the shaft, the ferrule and the laminations....not the joint or butt.
In closing, our experiment asked which cue the players liked best:
Of the 70 players, nearly 55 liked the hit of two cues with different
numbers:
When the two were exposed, they both were sneaky petes, wood to wood joints,
(one a Scruggs and the other a Huebler); both about 19 oz., both about 13
1/4mm and
tended to be on the stiff side of "hit". By the way, the 55 who liked the
hit of these two cues:
more than half thought they would be steel jointed.
John McChesney
Texas Express
National Nine Ball Tour
PO Box 700814
Dallas Tx 75370
Voice 214 495 tour (8687)
Fax 214 495 7616
j...@texasexpress.com
http://www.texasexpress.com
