Top cuemakers are making jump/break cues for one reason - DEMAND. Players always want to buy the magic bullet - BK2, X-breaker, OB-1, 314, the list goes on and on. I'd hate to fathom how many balls Mosconi, Mizerak or Sigel would have run with all of this high-tech equipment. The point is that YOU CANNOT BUY A BETTER BREAK. You either have the stroke or you don't. If you can make balls with your break cue, but not your playing cue, that to me screams "confidence issue". Maybe you baby your playing cue and don't want to stroke at the balls. Maybe the idea of breaking with your Moori or Kamui tip makes you cringe. I don't know. I will tell you that I have broken with pretty much every "production" break cue on the planet, and NOT ONE of them made any significant difference in how the balls spread. NOT ONE of them made a ball every rack. NOT ONE of them always parked the cueball in the middle of the table. I posted the speed chart from Platinum Billiards for a reason. People think they are clocking the ball something fierce after they put a phenolic tip on their break cue. At a top speed of 25mph, the phenolic (with stiffer taper) tipped cues outperformed leather by a whopping 2% maximum. It's PERCEPTION that makes players buy $300-$500 jump/break cues, not REALITY. At the pro level, they are usually endorsed, so break cues make sense. Jump cues are functional, because they do something a regular cue can't. However, looking at the chart, I'm not getting much speed difference from my Sledgehammer j/b (hypothetical) or my BK2 than my STL-4 Schon player. Therefore, the only difference that could possibly make sense to me is either that 2% makes a huge difference in your break, which I sincerely doubt, or the PSYCHOLOGY of the break cue makes you break better, and same for your girlfriend.
