My 2 cents....
How a cue deflects, is often dictated by your playing and stroke styles....what may give you minimal deflection, may give me tons, dictated by how each individual player applies english, how long or short their stroke is, etc.....And, in addtion, how that shaft plays is directly dictated by the setup of the shaft (i.e. tip type (hard or soft)/ferrule type/taper etc.), and the forearm of your butt (OK, I know this sounds crazy and sort of Zen, but I believe that there is a vibration/tonal (these words are used because I lack better vocabulary to describe it) that must occur between shaft and butt, the more intune these parts come, the better the cue plays...probably crap, but it's worked for me).
The best shaft you can buy, bar none, is the one you believe you play the best with....whether that be predator/predator Z type/one of bluds/something of the $89 action cue you picked up at a garage sale.
My only findings has far as shaft selection goes (granted, for my personal playing style) is high quality maple (more growth rings the better) with an ivory ferrule, medium to hard tip, and a fairly short taper (8-10" range) and a fairly meaty shaft 12.75 to 13.25.
That may not be the setup that brings out your game, you need to experiment with every setup you can get your hands on....I've been blessed in that at one point in my life, I worked in a billiards store with a huge number of cues, and an up and coming cue maker that would make me anything I could think of...The best advice, keep playing, and when you run into the shaft that makes you forget about deflection and the such, and you quit overthinking your shot, hold on to it, and find a good cuemaker to try and reproduce it.
How a cue deflects, is often dictated by your playing and stroke styles....what may give you minimal deflection, may give me tons, dictated by how each individual player applies english, how long or short their stroke is, etc.....And, in addtion, how that shaft plays is directly dictated by the setup of the shaft (i.e. tip type (hard or soft)/ferrule type/taper etc.), and the forearm of your butt (OK, I know this sounds crazy and sort of Zen, but I believe that there is a vibration/tonal (these words are used because I lack better vocabulary to describe it) that must occur between shaft and butt, the more intune these parts come, the better the cue plays...probably crap, but it's worked for me).
The best shaft you can buy, bar none, is the one you believe you play the best with....whether that be predator/predator Z type/one of bluds/something of the $89 action cue you picked up at a garage sale.
My only findings has far as shaft selection goes (granted, for my personal playing style) is high quality maple (more growth rings the better) with an ivory ferrule, medium to hard tip, and a fairly short taper (8-10" range) and a fairly meaty shaft 12.75 to 13.25.
That may not be the setup that brings out your game, you need to experiment with every setup you can get your hands on....I've been blessed in that at one point in my life, I worked in a billiards store with a huge number of cues, and an up and coming cue maker that would make me anything I could think of...The best advice, keep playing, and when you run into the shaft that makes you forget about deflection and the such, and you quit overthinking your shot, hold on to it, and find a good cuemaker to try and reproduce it.