Try soaking a lepro in milk for a day and then press it in a vise til its flat and then just a little more. You will get a tip that does not mushroom and still has a fairly soft feeling to it. You could buy a tip press to make the pressing consistent, but I don't think its necessary. Besides, its dirt cheap anyway, if you are unhappy try another one.
Elkmaster is too soft to play with out of the box. It feels like you have a pillow on the end of the cue, its awful. After its been soaked and pressed its a completely different tip, its awesome.
Triangle used to be good but the last two I put on were garbage and I had to cut them off. I'm not a repair man, just a guy that puts on his own tips and sometimes his friends tips, so I don't think I'll ever buy them again. Triumph I tried one time (its the grey one with the orange backing, right?) and I hated it. It felt hard, didn't hold chalk and it felt like I couldn't get any action on the ball at all. Maybe I was just unlucky.
McDermott single layer tip: This tip was a positive suprise. It felt like a really nice Triangle tip. Hard but not in a dried out kind of way.
All layered tips I have ever tried eventually start glazing over, making you miscue. It does not matter who puts the tip on, in the end this is what happens. The worst tip in this regard is Everest. I bought a g-core shaft that came with an Everest tip and I seriously considered complaining to McDermott about it. I could not get that tip to hold chalk even after I scuffed it down to half size! My current playing shaft also came with an Everest, why oh why do they have to put this God awful tip on every aftermarket shaft? Its the worst layered tip of all.
Tiger Sniper and Kamui black soft are the layered tips that last the longest in my opinion. I don't think I'll ever buy another layered tip after the Everest tip that came with my Z2-shaft has been worn out. I'll put on a diy lepro milkdud or maybe an Elkmaster milkdud.
