good tip, or bad tip. the way to know

[asbani]

I post this to get an idea of how to determine weather this tip is good, or this tip is bad, before installing it.

I see in alot of other threads where some tips comes bad from inside the box, for example a lepro tip is really good, but inside the new box you can have 40% of it that already came as Bad tips and won't be as good.

but for a guy like me, who has no experience in this area, I cannot figure out how to determine tips, Can somebody help me out on an old method, without any tools or tricks to find out that "this tip is good" or "this tip is bad" by touching or whatever, I mean, What am I suppose to look into when wanting to install the tip.

Today I am going to install a new lepro to my shaft, and I want to be for sure before putting it that its good, if there's a way for that, please share. I know more people wanting to know this aswell as I do.


thank you everybody


P.S. last week was so awesome, I love you accu-stats, and Jay you rocked!

 

[Masayoshi]

Its completely subjective. If the tip feels good when you hit with it, its a good tip. The only sure way to find out is to put it on and cut it off if you don't like it.

 

[PaulieB]

If there was a way to tell how good the tip was before installing it, especially among the type of tips that can vary so much, you would find lots of people selling boxes of "crappy" tips after they hand picked the good ones out of it. You don't see that, hence there is no way to tell without installing and playing with it (at least that I know of).

Heck, I just did an edit to my own post 2 seconds after posting it ... For that matter, if there was an easy way to tell among the tips that tend to vary a lot (which tend to be the non layered tips imo), the manufacturers would use quality control to pull out the less than perfect tips, reuse/recycle them somehow, and charge 5 times the amount for the ones they release to the public.

 

[JB Cases]

What's a bad tip? What are the characteristics?

I don't know an I have put on hundreds of tips. I used to put on Le Pros and Triangles right from the box without inspecting them. Never had a complaint from anyone with how the tip played when I was done.

Some people bite them. Some people use sour milk to soak them. Some people compress them. Some people do all of these things.

One thing I did look for when putting tips on was a flat surface on the bottom. Some Le Pros have a little bit of the stretch marks from the leather on the bottom and this of course creates an uneven surface. I would ususally toss those and find one with a flat surface to sand lightly before putting it on the cue.

Other than that I never looked for any way to discern "good" ones from "bad" ones.

Once in a while I would put on one and it would get spongy during the burnishing. That is bad. So I would take it off and put another one on. But I couldn't tell which ones would do that before getting to the burnishing point.

If y'all think CTE is voodoo think about all the confusion that surrounds tips.

Here's a funny story. At one time I had some 5 layer tips that were made from the rejected leather at the tip factory, so I was told. They were marked only with a white T on them. I sold those tips as "test" tips or something like that with no guarantee for like $1.50-3 a tip. They were sold with no hardness rating and as is. I never got one negative report back on them. In fact I had people asking for more.