Kirby Bedford in Broken Arrow, Ok. He's just getting going but has been a machinist quite a while. He's only made a few so far but what i've seen is very nice. Another young guy is Cody Cash in Wichita. Cues are 'PK Custom Cues' Check out his work on FB. Great guy. He re-finished my Jensen and fixed Duane Remick's(fellow AZ'r) Owen that got broken. Great work at fair prices done on time. Rocky Biswell in Ok. City does nice work too. He is 1/2 owner of Chester's poolroom with Barton. CAM(Chad McLennan) cues in Choctaw,Ok. does super old school style cues. He's a aircraft machinist at TinkerAFB so he knows tight spec/quality. There are others all over the country.
If you like old-school(who doesn't??) look close at CAM's stuff. He learned from both Andy Gilbert and Ron Haley when he was starting out. I'm not sure if he's taking on work right now. Contact him via FB. Cody Cash also is hip to old school designs and does super clean/tidy work.
Seems like most pros are playing with production cues that anyone can order and afford and you don't wait 2 years. I think the custom cue maker may be a dying art.
All of them would order custom if they didn't get paid to play with those factory cues.
Maybe, maybe not. Most pros these days couldn't care less about custom cues. They want a functional tool and that's it. Even if they were buying all they'd order would be sneakies and the most basic mw players.
You could probably count on your fingers those with contracts.
They get contracts or get freebies at the very least.
Sorry.
You think? Kinda doubt that. I'd be willing to wager that world-wide there's at least 100 top players under contract of some sort. Predator alone may have that many. When you figure in Mezz, Cuetec and all the side-deals like tips, cases, gloves, etc. its gotta be a pretty big number. Granted a lot of the deals are free product or contigency money like stickers on a NASCAR stock-car.
When i went to DCC the only players that had nice/hi-end cues were the regular dead-money Joes. None of the big guys had fancy cues at all. The only 'big' cue i saw the entire event was Shannon's tuxedo Gilbert. Saw a few SW's but again most were not in the hands of a what i'd come close to calling a pro. Saw a ton of plain-janes, sneakies and good ol 4pt Schons and Joss. As pool demographics keep changing you'll see less-n-less hi-end cues at the top level. Pros from back-in-the-day used customs because they were usually either free or heavily discounted and used as advertising for the builder.
Dennis played with a Sw.
Classic American cues have always been kind of a cult thing in Asian countries. Not anything like that today. Most are using production cues of some kind. Peri cues have become very big over there. My point is custom stuff will always be around but they are getting less-n-less common at hi-level events. I asked a couple top Euro players this very question and they couldn't care less. They wanted simple tools that work. Of course they're going to take the money. Who wouldn't?
Dead money Joes?
I suspect they are playing with custom cues made by those manufacturers. They may look like off the shelf variety but looks can be deceiving.
I think that a lot of the better production cues match up very well with the custom cues in all areas except personal customization and I think a couple production makers will do that also.
Some of the Up and Coming cuemakers of just a couple years ago are some of the best in the business today like Astle and Cohen.