I thnk you have some of the physics and issues incorreclty positioned in your thining processes.
There are leather tips that are sufficiently hard that jumping is not made usefully any harder, and are sufficiently hard to serve as a break tip for those that can muster 25 MPH cue ball speeds. Look for tips in the 90 range on the durrometer (Water buffalo comes to mind).
Not entirely true. A standard Water Buffalo may test at a 90 but that is only on the glazed surface. I went through all this many years ago in my Instroke Tip testing craze where I made all sorts of charts with Durometer numbers on 10 points on each tip - both out of the box and after x-number of shots. I thought I was going to revolutionize how tips were bought and sold. This approach was based on Guido Orlandi's methods of rating tips which I expanded.
In my testing the Water Buffalo only performs close to the phenolic when it is highly compressed, very thin AND is glazed with a thin layer of super glue. During this time I had a dozen jump cues of various brands as well as hundreds of Bunjee Jumpers to test on.
A leather jump tip is vastly better for applying spin on jumps than is a phenolic tip. This spin can manifest itself as draw, follow and massé--and if you learn to control it, can be quite valuable.
Well, this seems true on the surface but since I saw at my Bunjee Booth, that Ned Morris drew the cueball table length after a table length corner to corner jump shot I have to conclude that it's largely how good your stroke is. Buddy Hall also did an impromptu demonstration once and showed us all just how well a professional can control the cue ball with a phenolic tipped jump cue. Lastly at one the Vegas tournaments Bob Meucci was playing around at our booth doing full cue masse' shots with the Bunjee Breaker. Later we put it on his machine and it tested better on deflection than a lot of the name brand cues he had tested up until that point.
I can apply a generous amount of spin on jump shots using my phenolic tipped Fury jump cue. This has to do with the amount of practice I have put in.
A leather tip on a jump cue will miscue less often than the phenolic tip and give some margin for bridge-position or cue-aiming-at-cue-ball error.
Got anything to back up this assertion? First there is a no-miscue area on the cueball and if your tip hits inside this circle then you will never miscue. If you hit outside the circle then you will always miscue.
I don't really get the idea that any sort of cue tip can make up for alignment or aiming errors. That seems like magic to me. Either you are lined up correctly or you are not. Pool cues are pretty democratic in this regard they hit the ball where they are pointed without regard to the player holding them. They neither help nor hinder a player's shot UNLESS you are speaking of deflection reduction and consistentcy which is outside this discussion.
There are some venues where my jump cue is also my short stick due to wall impediments. Having a leather tip here is vastly better than having my playing cue at 50 degrees above the horizontal.
If you are using it as a short stick then presumably you are addressing the ball on the horizontal - and yes a leather tip
feels more comfortable. But as to whether it's inherently better..... well I played many times using ONLY the phenolic tipped jump cue and won nice sum of money a few times. I even ran eight and out using the phenolic tipped jump cue once. So I'd say that my own fairly deep experience in this area goes counter to what you are presenting as conventional wisdom. I even
tortured a pair of UPA "pros" and made them quit while using the Fury Jump Break cue. And I mean TORTURED in the literal sense that I was running out from everywhere with no problem and giving them no air whatsoever.
)
