I took a leap of faith and ordered a Fury cue from AliExpress:
I got the YT-1 model with the 11.8 mm shaft ("KT Advanced"). The advertised price at the time was right around $250. Subtracting a new-user discount, but adding sales tax, the total came to exactly $247. So, here are my thoughts:
I got the YT-1 model with the 11.8 mm shaft ("KT Advanced"). The advertised price at the time was right around $250. Subtracting a new-user discount, but adding sales tax, the total came to exactly $247. So, here are my thoughts:
- The wood looks amazing. The figuring, stain, etc. of the rosewood and the maple almost glows. The cue looks like it does in the promotional photos, which is still kind of a shock to me.
- ~$250 for a cue with 5 rings and 6 points seems almost unbelievable. The rings and points are pretty intricate, too. The points are inlays instead of splices, but at this price point, it seems like the only decoration you can expect from a US brand is decals.
- The points are different lengths. There's not much variation between adjacent points (maybe half an inch at most), but the longest point is about an inch longer than the shortest point (on the opposite side). This is the sort of thing that would usually bother me, but I feel like it's kind of a reminder that they're real wood points, and not decals.
- The rings line up with each other pretty well, but for the ring under the points, the black bits don't line up perfectly with the centers of the points. They're off by about 1-1.5 millimeters. (You can see this in the attached picture.) As with the points, this doesn't really bother me. Another reminder that the decoration isn't decals.
- The shaft is 11.8 mm with a conical taper. The ferrule is 1 centimeter long. The tip is advertised to be a Tiger tip in the product listing, and I have no reason to doubt that. It definitely has a bunch of layers. And it arrived nicely shaped.
- The shaft has "KT Advanced" printed on it. I wish I knew what that meant. Fury's cheaper cues come with "KT Original" shafts (if you select the 11.8 mm option). I assume that "Advanced" is a step up from "Original" but I have no idea what the difference is supposed to be.
- There's an image in the product listing that's hard to decipher. It looks like Fury's low-deflection shafts are called "Evolution" (you get an "HT Evolution" shaft if you choose the 13 mm option) but the "KT Advanced" logo is in the same image, so I have no idea if the shaft is low-deflection or not. Although if I had to bet money, I would guess not.
- The bumper is pretty easy to unscrew. Fury makes two types of butt extensions for the cue. One looks like it's supposed to be installed semi-permanently and the other looks like it's quick-release. They're all 8 inches. The product listings are a bit tricky to find on AliExpress. I just ordered the quick-release extension for $42 plus tax. There are also a bunch of third-party butt extensions that claim to be compatible with Fury cues; some are listed on Amazon.
- I ordered the cue via AliExpress from a Chinese vendor called "Adicto al billar" (which means "Addicted to billiards" in Spanish... why not?). It was shipped the following day via UPS and arrived on my doorstep 8 days later. The whole experience was really good.
