Gold Crown Slate Upgrade?
- Thread starter bigchase
- Start date
No and i SERIOUSLY doubt it. GC's w/slate were 1" thick and the Brunstones were 1&3/16" thick. The new GC6 is one inch. Think about it, why would they go to the trouble/expense of using slate that thick? Just makes the table heavier/pricier but doesn't alter the way it plays.
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Jay Spielberg was telling me that he uses 1 1/2" slate on Gold Crown. This was a few years ago. His number is 603-765-6160. Jay is a billiards mechanic in the North East.
Carom tables with 3-inch slates certainly seem more solid than pool tables with much thinner slate. Maybe part of it is that you have to have a much better frame to hold all that weight. I imagine that the thicker slate is less prone to warping, and I've seen 1-inch slate warp.
I know Soren Sogard's have 2" slate and i could see where 3c might benefit from a more stable platform but i don't see pool being greatly improved. I've never seen a shot on a GC or Diamond being missed because slate was too thin. Looks like a lot of cost and weight for not much return in playability.
I've seen lots of shots on pool tables missed because the slates were unlevel or misaligned or had bad joints between the slates. The installer or owner probably said at some point, "That's good enough -- to hard to make it perfect and nobody around here will notice."
There's a spectrum of tables -- worthless, lousy, tolerable, OK, good, nice, better, best. Different people are comfortable at different places along the spectrum. Look at the players who have to have the best balls when using scratched 40-year-old Hyatts would hardly make a lick of difference to their games.
Some people enjoy having the best.
Raymond Ceulemans said if you add a quarter inch to a slate, the table plays a full
length longer...a bit vague, I feel...but a lot of truth.
A heavy table will bank better also...'cause the rails are attached to something more solid.
I've seen cheap tables where you can actually see the table vibrate on a hard bank.
Try lagging as hard as you can on a honeycomb slate...not much more than 3 lengths
on the one I tried.
If I had to buy a table blind, I'd take the heaviest one.
I thought the antique tables had thicker slates and I used to hear
this reason and that why it was better
I thought it might be more stable,it is easy to see why a 1/16 inch slate would not
be so good
i assumed the heavier slate would be better,but commercial reasons,plus ease of installation
make a 1 inch slate the compromise which is necessary
it would surprise me to see Brunswick offer any change in slate
If someone had an old set of 2 inch thick slates could he put them on his Gold Crown or Centennial at home?
Thanks for the thread
this reason and that why it was better
I thought it might be more stable,it is easy to see why a 1/16 inch slate would not
be so good
i assumed the heavier slate would be better,but commercial reasons,plus ease of installation
make a 1 inch slate the compromise which is necessary
it would surprise me to see Brunswick offer any change in slate
If someone had an old set of 2 inch thick slates could he put them on his Gold Crown or Centennial at home?
Thanks for the thread
Not level or mis-aligned sure but not too thin. And the op asked about GC's and not some pos honeycomb import. I still don't believe you could tell the difference if a GC(or Diamond) had a slate thicker than the standard 1". Recently played on a Rasson with 30mm(1.2") slate and i thought it sucked. Not because of the slate(balls rolled very well) but because the pockets spit-out a lot of firmly hit shots. I know they support a lot of events but compared to a GC or Diamond i thought it was crap.
Likely a ‘diminishing returns’ issue. If I was a billionaire setting up the ultimate no-expense-spared home billiard room, and had commissioned a custom-designed table.....why not? Is it possible the quality of antique 2”+ slate material might somehow be better (a natural resource who’s availability is diminishing), or would modern/computerized fabricating machinery insure a truer surface? Something to consider. Heavier/sturdier is likely always better, but the extra cost/hassle wouldn’t be justified for the average player. A one-piece slate that does away with joints might be a different story though.