Cuechanger LD-shaft

R

RSCA HOOLIGAN

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
Yesterday i had the opportunity to play with a cuechanger LD-shaft who are made by a German cuemaker Oliver Stopps .
I was more than impressed with the playability and low deflection qualities of this shaft .
This shaft gives you ultra low deflection with a lot of feedback and cueball control .
As far as low deflection this is the best shaft i have ever played with .
I play with a BD cue with SS360 shaft wich is a great shaft for me but has a little bit more deflection .
Of all the shafts i played with there are only 2 shafts who managed to put a smile on my face , i'm happy that i found this second shaft yesterday .

Don't ask me wich is the best out of the two because i don't know , the only difference is that the cuechanger has less deflection than my SS360 .
 
Hey RSCA, you should ask Markus (concept creator for those cues made by Stopps) what kind of maple is used. I shot with those cues over a year ago and indeed I was also impressed by their hit. The taper is nice and sleek too. Anyhow, when I shot with it, I thought the shaft had a higher gpi (grains per inch) count, because that one wasn't a full white shaft.
Great cue all over, too bad the standard cuechanger series are plain janes only.
 
I was watching the latest GB9 stream and the commentators were talking about Drago's cue, which looks like a snooker cue. They mentioned it was made by a German CM - same guy?
 
Thanks for the nice review RSCA!

We make these shafts in 2 flavors, one is the Premium-A shaft:
http://www.doubledavecues.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=235_331&products_id=3992

And the Exclusive-AAA shaft:
http://www.doubledavecues.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=235_331&products_id=3993

There are 2 main differences between the models, one is the quality of the shaftwood,
we use excellent quality for the Premium-A but for the Exclusive we only use the absolute best we
can find. From our last order of 200 shaft blanks there were maybe 10 or 12 AAA shafts in the
bunch and 60 or 70 A quality. The rest was mainly discarded, a few were used for jump or break cues.

The second difference is the ferrule, the A have Juma ferrules which are really good,
the AAA have MasonH micarta ferrules which is in our opinion the best ferrule material there is,
but not cheap and very hard to get. The hard to get part is the reason we don't use them on
the Premium-A aswell, we would run out pretty quick.

As a last difference, there is no extra charge for more expensive tips on th AAA shafts.

Also, in regards to resurrecta, we have made several cues with points aswell and will probably be
adding it as a standard option soon.

gr. Dave
 
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Double-Dave said:
Thanks for the nice review RSCA!

We make these shafts in 2 flavors, one is the Premium-A shaft:
http://www.doubledavecues.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=235_331&products_id=3992

And the Exclusive-AAA shaft:
http://www.doubledavecues.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=235_331&products_id=3993

There are 2 main differences between the models, one is the quality of the shaftwood,
we use excellent quality for the Premium-A but for the Exclusive we only use the absolute best we
can find. From our last order of 200 shaft blanks there were maybe 10 or 12 AAA shafts in the
bunch and 60 or 70 A quality. The rest was mainly discarded, a few were used for jump or break cues.

The second difference is the ferrule, the A have Juma ferrules which are really good,
the AAA have MasonH micarta ferrules which is in our opinion the best ferrule material there is,
but not cheap and very hard to get. The hard to get part is the reason we don't use them on
the Premium-A aswell, we would run out pretty quick.

As a last difference, there is no extra charge for more expensive tips on th AAA shafts.

Also, in regards to resurrecta, we have made several cues with points aswell and will probably be
adding it as a standard option soon.

gr. Dave
Click to expand...

Is there any difference in terms of LD between the two shafts ? And have you done a side by side comparison with other LD shafts?
 
Yeah I was wonderign about that too and can you tell something about the growth rings on the AAA? Is it like those types of old growth maple that have for example 16+ gpi?
 
Pathetic Shark said:
Is there any difference in terms of LD between the two shafts ? And have you done a side by side comparison with other LD shafts?
Click to expand...

Yes, a little bit. The MasonH micarta is lighter then the Juma, also the extremely dense AAA shaftwood
allows for a slightly wider hole (we are talking fractions of a mm) in the shaft without losing feel/hit.
Therefore the AAA will have a little bit less deflection then an A shaft but really not an extreme difference.

We have not done any scientific testing on these shafts as in putting them in a robot to test the deflection.
That would also be missing the point. There are several shafts on the market that offer very little deflection,
certainly when tested against a 12.75mm version of our shaft they would have less deflection (allbeit not all
that much less, but still). But in most cases that very low deflection comes at a great price of sacrificing feel
and as such consistency in the results the shaft delivers in the real world. We try to build a shaft that has
great feel, great feedback and very low deflection. It is not possible to test feel and feedback in a scientific way.

gr. Dave
 
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resurrecta said:
Yeah I was wonderign about that too and can you tell something about the growth rings on the AAA? Is it like those types of old growth maple that have for example 16+ gpi?
Click to expand...

What would you like to know about the growth rings? It is simply looking at the end grain of a shaft and counting
the number of lines you see.

For example, the shaftwood blank in the picture has around 32 growth rings showing, it is around 1.3" diagonally
and as such is a shaft with around 25gpi. It would be a candidate for an Exclusive-AAA LD shaft.

gr. Dave
 

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JoeyInCali said:
Are they LD shafts as in hollowed ends/low end-mass ?
Click to expand...

Is that a trick question:wink:?

Simply hollowing out shafts will in most cases reduce deflection but it is a bit more complicated then that.

A short light-weight ferrule, a specific taper, a hollowed out front end where the hollowed out section is
also based on the quality of the shaftwood and the desired diamater of the resulting shaft and all of
this starting with a very high quality blank is what makes this a low deflection shaft that still hits great
and still gives plenty of feedback.

You may also note that because these shafts are very stiff hitting because of the taper, we do not offer
any of the real hard tips as an option, we feel that is simply too much.

A last remark might be we do not really concern ourselves with whether or not a shaft is real white, if
it is that is fine but we certainly do mind mind having a bit of honey colour or the occasional mineral or
sugar spot in the shafts.

gr. Dave
 
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Double-Dave said:
Is that a trick question:wink:?

Simply hollowing out shafts will in most cases reduce deflection but it is a bit more complicated then that.

A short light-weight ferrule, a specific taper, a hollowed out front end where the hollowed out section is
also based on the quality of the shaftwood and the desired diameter of the resulting shaft and all of
this starting with a very high quality blank is what makes this a low deflection shaft that still hits great
and still gives plenty of feedback.

You may also note that because these shafts are very stiff hitting because of the taper, we do not offer
any of the real hard tips as an option, we feel that is simply too much.

A last remark might be we do not really concern ourselves with whether or not a shaft is real white, if
it is that is fine but we certainly do mind mind having a bit of honey colour or the occasional mineral or
sugar spot in the shafts.

gr. Dave
Click to expand...
Thanks.
So, the front has a drilled hole.
 
Double-Dave said:
What would you like to know about the growth rings? It is simply looking at the end grain of a shaft and counting
the number of lines you see.

For example, the shaftwood blank in the picture has around 32 growth rings showing, it is around 1.3" diagonally
and as such is a shaft with around 25gpi. It would be a candidate for an Exclusive-AAA LD shaft.

gr. Dave
Click to expand...

This is interesting. I have an old dufferin that has 15 growth rings at the joint - how would that compare to one of your shafts (and shafts generally)?

Also, how many shafts do you get out of each of those blocks of wood - just one?
 
15 rings @ the joint is 17 or 18 gpi, that is a fairly high number even for custom cues.
I think in general anything over 10gpi is more then decent shaftwood, for break or jump
cues you can easily use 6 or 8 gpi. Shafts with over 20gpi are really, really rare.

You can only get 1 shaft out of these squares, they are around 1.1" by 1.2", to get 2
they would need to be at least 1x1.5, most blanks are 1x1", these blanks leave a little
extra room to play with when centering the shafts so that you get the grain running as
straight as possible.

gr. Dave
 
resurrecta said:
I second that, thanks for the info. Final question, if a customer would say like for example, I'd like to have a 20+ grain shaft, how do you proceed. What's the extra charge on those?
Click to expand...

There is only one way to get a shaft that densely grained, and that is to order an Exclusive-AAA shaft,
on the Premium-A shaft we do not give any kind of guarantee on the number of growthrings in the shaft.

gr. Dave
 
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