Microchipping a cue

[MythCues]

A few months ago there was a discussion about unique identifiers and proximity alarms for cues. I still haven't seen a good system for the proximity alarm, but from one of today's links re inlays and guitars, I found something a few cuemakers might be interested in. It's an RFID(radio frequency identification device) with a unique idenfier code that can be glued into the cue. http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Accessories/Security/SNAGG_Microchip.html

It sounds pretty interesting, and as it allows for a scanning distance of 2-3", the rice-grain-sized chip could be at the center of the core and still be read with no problem. Pretty hard to remove that identifier without rendering the cue useless.

Slightly expensive, with the scanner costing $250 and 6 chips costing $100, but if I ever get deeper into cuemaking rather than just repair, it's something I'm probably going to do.

 

[Mr Hoppe]

Interesting, but I'm not convinced it would do much good. In the example of musical instruments (guitars), manufacturers pump out hundreds/thousands of units that all look alike. In the world of custom cues, most are unique by a little, if not a lot. Also, cues tend to trade hands quite readily, so unless there was an authoritative entity to track the current owner of a cue with chip 12345, I'm not sure how this would aid in recovering that cue in the event of a theft.

I guess at best this would be like writing down the serial number on your DVD player. If it's stolen and later recovered, the police tend to believe you if you can describe it and then produce it's serial number. But if your cue is stolen and later recovered, and you can produce a picture of it, wouldn't that probably be good enough for the police to believe it's yours? Just not sure it's worth the extra cost for your average cue. Might be a nice option on high-end cues though.
Mr H