I wonder if Predator and Lucasi may have ever had a Collaboration together.

skor said:
Both brands are made in the same factory, call it what you want….
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Unless one of them owns the factory, it's co-hosting of the manufacturing. Same way computer chip companies have many customers for the same chips.
 
Kim Bye said:
Lucasi did not make Predator and just as Predator is a brand that outsources the making of their products, so is Lucasi. It's not like Joss, Mezz or Viking who actually own a factory where they make their products..
Predator wood shafts are also made in China. The Revo line is possibly still being made in the Boston area.
Predator used to have a phrase saying: "designed in Jacsonville USA" that kinda gave the game away, so they have removed that wording as well.
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Not long ago I was thinking about going to the offices in Jacksonville because I figured it would be like a giant showroom of cues and shafts, pool tables and demo cues. Asked around, and it's just a boring ole office.
 
Geez today I found out Predator was/is made in China. My first experience of Predator was some guy saying he was from Florida and was driving up and down the state trying to sell these batch of cues. He took them out of his trunk and they were a bunch of sneaky petes with veneers no cat logo. So after all these years I figure they were Made in Florida. This was around late 90's or early 00's I recall. It's been awhile.

Then an old timer here told me it was made in China. I just assumed he misspoke or confused.

So its really made from China?
 
Predators are status symbols now because of the counterfeits out there.

I know Filipinos that see me shoot with a Mezz and get all excited because Mezz is extremely popular in Asia. It's like their Rolls Royce of cues.

He was more interested in my Mezz than my customs. I figure he would be more excited to see the USA custom cues since we have the greatest makers that ever lived.
 
billiards_watch said:
Geez today I found out Predator was/is made in China. My first experience of Predator was some guy saying he was from Florida and was driving up and down the state trying to sell these batch of cues. He took them out of his trunk and they were a bunch of sneaky petes with veneers no cat logo. So after all these years I figure they were Made in Florida. This was around late 90's or early 00's I recall. It's been awhile.

Then an old timer here told me it was made in China. I just assumed he misspoke or confused.

So its really made from China?
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Predator used to be a shaft company more than anything else. Selling cues was just a way to sell shafts.
And they made the best performance shafts out there!

Today it looks like cues and shafts are not what they are most looking to sell; they are looking at the whole game room. It's understandable; with CF shafts, the competition is greater, it's easier to produce an LD shaft with CF, and CF shafts will last longer, so sales of replacement shafts are down.

I got my first Predator cue in 1998; after that, I just stayed with the shafts and fitted them to other brands butts, whether they were high-level production or custom cues. Never really liked where they were going with the cue design past 2000; I hate that Luxe leather grip, and their prices were getting ridiculous for a Chinese mass production cue.

Before CF, if someone had asked me what cue to get, I would have answered - "Doesn't matter as long as it has a Predator shaft on it". Today, the difference in performance of CF shafts (the top brands) is so small that you can get a really great player with LD shafts for the price of a Predator shaft...
 
hang-the-9 said:
Not long ago I was thinking about going to the offices in Jacksonville because I figured it would be like a giant showroom of cues and shafts, pool tables and demo cues. Asked around, and it's just a boring ole office.
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Anyone visited their Revo-making unit near Boston?
 
vintagecollectibles831 said:
I wonder if Predator and Lucasi may have ever had a Collaboration together.

I understand that they probably did not, but on many occasions over the years, I have seen older 90's era Lucasi cues with matching Pre Cat Predator 314 shafts, and I always thought that was really cool.

The Lucasi cues may have even been from the early 2000's, but they do always have the older Lucasi logo, with like a 3 digit number on the opposite side.

But, I have actually seen a lot of them with matching ringwork Predator Pre Cat 314 shafts.

I always assumed that the owner probably just had a cue maker match up the Ringwork with a stock Lucasi shaft, remove its ringwork, and put the matching ringwork collar on a Predator Pre Cat 314 shaft, but I do not know.

Seems like a lot of work just to have matching ringwork though, on a Lucasi pool cue.

Thanks for any thoughts about this.
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yes. They collaborated sort of. When Lucasi went to their “2nd generation” cues, they came standard with Uniloc and were available with Predator shafts. It’s fair to assume that they had some kind of business agreement with Predator (but maybe just from a wholesale buying).

Jim Lucas (Cue and Case) and the former Clawson (now called Predator Group) are/were both from Jacksonville. Jim Lucas and Alan McCarty were former partners.

That all said, I don’t know the specifics, so I’ve reached out to Paul Costain (inventor of the Uniloc and former co-owner of Predator) and Wes Bond (owner of Koda/Bull Carbon, formerly of Cue and Case, and son-in-law of Jim Lucas). I’d send a note to Jim Lucas, but I don’t think he looks at his messages much.

Note: it seems Lucas liked the joint so much that he bought all he could for that “2nd generation” of cue line. No official partnership.
 
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skor said:
I got my first Predator cue in 1998; after that, I just stayed with the shafts and fitted them to other brands butts, whether they were high-level production or custom cues. Never really liked where they were going with the cue design past 2000; I hate that Luxe leather grip, and their prices were getting ridiculous for a Chinese mass production cue.
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you could get the 5k series with linen wrap iirc, and that was like 2008.. 314-2 era. don't know when production of the butts went to asia, mid-2000's maybe
 
Chopdoc said:
You're kidding, right?
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No. I play with customs only up until last year when I bought a Mezz cue while waiting for a cue being built.

Actually, I take it back, I've owned 2 Jacoby's. They're not customs.

I'm an American and America has the world's greatest cue makers so playing with a foreign cue isn't something I thought about.
 
billiards_watch said:
No. I play with customs only up until last year when I bought a Mezz cue while waiting for a cue being built.

Actually, I take it back, I've owned 2 Jacoby's. They're not customs.

I'm an American and America has the world's greatest cue makers so playing with a foreign cue isn't something I thought about.
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I like corvettes, but I still know about JDM and Ferrari.

I won the only Predator I ever owned playing 9 ball. The guy was out of cash and put up his cue.

I traded it not long after for an early McDermott and It's George case. No regrets, but I am astounded at what that Predator is worth now.

I was even more focused than you with your "customs". I have been playing with the same block letter Joss since 1985, and breaking with a McDermott I got about 1991. That was it for decades. But I still knew what was going on around me.

I guess it just depends on where one puts one's attention.

I still love traditional cues, and my Joss is still my player. I know about them, but don't really give a rats ass about Predator, Mezz, et al. Kind of like i don't care about JDM cars. I would take a big block Chevy in anything over any one of them, or sell one of them to get the big block. I have some Asian cues from back in the day for nostalgia. Adam, Cobra Professional, and Mizerak Professional. I have a few of the "cheap" ones too, for fun.

To each their own. I just figured younger guys would know more, not less, about Predator. A stereotype I guess.
 
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