Diamond Rails
- Thread starter DTL
- Start date
Yes they are both good rails.
The reason Diamond chose the "black diamond" rubber for the smaller tables is to try and get the same consistancy with table speed on all of their tables. The artemis rails are a tad faster than the black diamond to help accommodate the longer travel needed on a 9ft table.
In other words if you put a ball in the center of the table and hit towards one of the end cushions, it would take the same amount of speed on both 9ft and 7ft table to get that ball to rebound back to the exact center of the table (of course ignoring all over variables). Obviously they won't play exact, but that is the goal they are striving for.
The reason Diamond chose the "black diamond" rubber for the smaller tables is to try and get the same consistancy with table speed on all of their tables. The artemis rails are a tad faster than the black diamond to help accommodate the longer travel needed on a 9ft table.
In other words if you put a ball in the center of the table and hit towards one of the end cushions, it would take the same amount of speed on both 9ft and 7ft table to get that ball to rebound back to the exact center of the table (of course ignoring all over variables). Obviously they won't play exact, but that is the goal they are striving for.
I am sure the Diamond folks would love to use their own rubber, but they dont use it on their premier product.
that is telling.
Ive played on GC tables redone with the black and they were different, not in a good way. Not unuseable, but not as good as the superspeed OEM stuff.
that is telling.
Ive played on GC tables redone with the black and they were different, not in a good way. Not unuseable, but not as good as the superspeed OEM stuff.
The advice on GC rails I was given was unless they were terrible don't replace them. I have a GC III that I bought and went through powder coating the metals and recovering with Simonis 860. I asked some mechanics and they said you couldn't get the original stuff anymore but there was an alternative but it wasn't exactly the same or as good.
So I just recovered the original rails. It banks, IMO, better than any Diamond table.
Someone can correct me if the "superspeed" rails are available. Just going on what I was told.
Ken
I'd defer to someone with direct knowedge, but my take on the matter from reading here- I also have GC- there was a bad era for superspeeds and they returned to a quality rubber source.
Yes it is telling, and the fact that they scale the speed to 9 feet but not the size of the balls to 9 feet makes the entire thing a mess. But since they chose to "scale" just 1 of the 2, if you switch to a 9 feet table you not only have to scale your speed, but also your bank angles. The obvious best option would be to not use scaling rails at all so that way you'd only ever have to change your speed no matter what Diamond pocket table you play on.
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I think you are right, I'm old enough to remember the old U.S. made rubber (OEM Monarch Superspeed) and it was significantly better in my opinion than the new Asian made rubber.
This has a lot to do with the subrail. On GC I's and II's the subrail needs to be rebeveled to properly accept the modern K-55 profile which is a tad smaller than Monarch SuperSpeeds the tables originally came with. I have a GCI with properly calibrated subrail and Diamond Black Cushions and it is every bit as fast as a Blue Label Diamond and plays awesome.
