Having recently took some time off from pool, and getting back into it, I ended up having to look at my cue inventory, and started horsing around with different manufacturers and custom cues. Perhaps, 10-20 years ago, there was a measurable gap between the custom cues, and the production cues available at the time. Now, it seems that the top quality production cues are as good as the custom cues available today.
This isn't a discussion regarding collecting cues. This is purely me observing fit and finish, quality of construction, and repeatability in the way that cues play. Predator is putting out a quality cue with CNC inlays - as good as a lot of the custom CNC guys, at a better price, with better technology.
I freely admit that my knowledge of custom cue makers, as in who are the top 5 or 6 makers and why their cues are so respected, is not what it used to be. Or even which are the top 5-6 production cue manufacturers.
However, i know something about custom guns and custom fly rod makers, as well as a little about custom sports car manufacturers, and I don't see why the basics would be any different.
For instance, when it comes to fit and finish, in car building, guns, and fly rods human craftsmanship is still able to produce a far better product in terms of fit and finish and quality of construction than any machine. And in all three the custom product performs better as well.
One example in terms of fit and finish: Ferrari employs a man in the painting department who's job it is to apply each coat of paint by hand then inspect each coat after it dries by hand. What I mean by that is after every coat dries, he actually runs his hands over the entire surface of the car
and can feel differences in the thickness of the paint down to 1/10,000th of an inch. No machine is capable of registering such a difference. He marks every high spot and then carefully buffs down those areas before applying the next coat. This produces a paint job on a Ferrari that can't be reproduced by any computer-driven painting machine.
Another example in the gun world: it's widely understood that the finest weapons made are double barreled rifles, typically used for safaris in Africa. These weapons are hand-made to exacting specifications, usually for the individual customer so that the weight, balance, length of pull, comb height, etc. are specifically tailored to the hunter that bought it. No machine can do this. And no big game hunter that buys such a weapon would want a machine-made rifle, because it takes a human craftsman to ensure every part works exactly as it should, that every sear, limb, spring, etc., is not only the right size and dimensions, but that every part is perfectly polished (similar to the Ferrari paint job) so that they work as if coated in perfectly evenly laid glass for absolute reliability. Which is what you want when a 2,000 lb. Cape buffalo is charging you from 30 feet away. These weapons start at $50,000 and can be more than $250,000. Perfection has its price . . .
Fly rods are made all over the world, with the largest makers in China and Korea. These companies rely heavily on machine manufacturing to keep costs down, and they do produce a very good product most of the time.
But the very best fly rod makers in the world are in the U.S., and the best of those still make their rods mostly or entirely by hand. Companies like Sage and Winston still employ craftsman to hand roll rod sections, apply paint and so forth, inspecting their work at every stage, to produce a rod that not only has significantly better fit and finish, but performs on the water better than any Chinese or Korean made rod.
Now a pool cue isn't a car with its thousands of moving parts, or a gun with its few dozen that have to perform under extreme pressure and violent motion. A cue isn't even similar to a fly rod, which must endure extremes in temperature, repeated dunkings in fresh or salt water for hours at a time, etc.
But a cue must perform its job, and just like guns, fly rods, and sports cars, I'll bet that the very best performing, best fit and finish, most reliably durable cues are still made by craftsmiths.
