Poll: Inlayed cues vs. natural wood cues

masonh said:
you are probably having plenty of fun just staring at it anyway.:D
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Actually it's been raining like hell all week, and I've got in in a place where the humidity (hopefully) won't affect it- haven't seen it in a while.:p
 
qbilder said:
First of all, i'm sorry to hear about your health. God bless you & your family.

I think you may be reading too far into what I was saying. I was lobbying for cuemakers, not degrading them. I'm on your side. I want to see cuemakers finally get their due. All in all, cuemakers are friends & comrades. But you can't tell me you don't see builders on this very site going at it, trying to bash each other or disqualify each other as builders. I can think of two such incidents within the last six months. One was a couple of builders fighting about sneakies & pricing for them & who was a real cuemaker & not. The other was two builders fighting over machinery & patents & crap. If we all got paid our worth, there would be no tension & cues in general would progress to all new heights of quality & creativity. So I feel it would be great if all got their true worth, and never had to stress selling a cue because they needed the money. I don't know a single cuemaker who can use cues to pay for his home, transportaion, food, clothing and all insurances including health. I seriously doubt one exists, besides production factories. I don't think cuemakers should all be rich. But I think it would be neat if any guy who builds a quality cue could make as much as if he had a 40hr/week job at McDonalds.
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Eric,
Why is this? Why do cuemakers, especially the mid-tier guys, have to take less than their "worth"? IMHO it's simple economics. There is a much greater supply, than there is a demand. Not every cuemaker is a Tascarella, Mottey, Hercek, or Searing. Any cuemaker thinking about doing this as a job needs to take a few things into consideration, such as the money to get started for machinery (as stated before), the fact there is a lot of competition, their own cost of living etc.. IMHO cuemakers shouldn't gripe they aren't paying the bills and cannot make money if they didn't think of all these factors BEFORE they got started.
Now anyone that can afford a few grand on a Uniqque or Hightower setup feels they have a right to call themselves cuemakers. They don't want to hear there are guys in front of them, guys who have been at it longer. They come out of the box asking for the same money Mottey, Tascarella, etc.. charge. When they don't get it, it's "I can't make no money building cues" well duh, no sh*t sherlock.
When Gus was building cues, there weren't 20 custom cuemakers. Now there are over 300 if not 400, if not more. Plus factor in the Pechauers, Schons, Vikings, Carolina's.. its a lot of wood that gets made every week. A lot of people are scrambling for the little money that is available. 30 years ago triple a shaftwood was just that, now triple a shaft wood is "c" shaftwood from 30 years ago. It's also not 1995 where people were making money hand over fist, and could keep 4-5 cues.
Now lets say all the guys stepped up and started raising their prices, what do you think would happen? Do you think that would solve all the problems financially? It wouldn't. Guys would still hunt down the "bargains", and 90% of the people who stepped up, would step back down. The pie is NOT big enough. There are not enough "big" collectors to absorb the amount of cues that are out there. That is why they are always for sale, regardless of how great they hit.
Cuemakers have an uphill battle, and every time a new cuemaker posts I can hear the collective "sigh" of the industry.

JV
 
Eric/JV,

I think you are both right....but the underlying issue that we face in our industry right now is that we as a group has not marketed ourselves well nor have we invested in demand creation which is vital for all of us to move our products. Looking at the pool industry, I'm sure many would agree that there seem to be less public participation...mostly due to smoking laws that have killed hundreds of billiard parlors. Less players, Less places to place, slow economy and less billiard marketing on TV...all add up to a shrinking market! The market we're in is tight and players are not getting any richer...so they're tight.

The billiards industry in my opinion needs to market to NON PLayers, New Blood!! We gotta attack and attract corporation and people with disposable income to our industry?

Honestly, how can you market the game of pool and its products to a new generation that don't find pool as fascinating as we do? How can you get someone who does not play pool to buy a pool cue as a gift for someone else?
We can't market to existing players and collector anymore...they're tapped out!! The market is so small and we're all trying to get a piece . To bad we don't have bigger organization that willing to invest in our industry....Personally think someone with some money could have market the billiards industry well to create the demand we desperately need. IPT had a shot but unfortunately they didn't follow throught....concepts was great to make the pool more exciting. We have to make pool into a profitable industry to attract investment...pool has be marketed like snooker or better soccer. Hopefully, the growth in china and their every increasing interest in this game will help us all.

Anyway, just my rambling..

Regards,
Duc.
 
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cueaddicts said:
Offer it all (the full spectrum of styles) and potentially cater to every customer preference....

Just a guess. :)
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Exactly! people love choices.
 
classiccues said:
Eric,
Why is this? Why do cuemakers, especially the mid-tier guys, have to take less than their "worth"? IMHO it's simple economics. There is a much greater supply, than there is a demand. Not every cuemaker is a Tascarella, Mottey, Hercek, or Searing. Any cuemaker thinking about doing this as a job needs to take a few things into consideration, such as the money to get started for machinery (as stated before), the fact there is a lot of competition, their own cost of living etc.. IMHO cuemakers shouldn't gripe they aren't paying the bills and cannot make money if they didn't think of all these factors BEFORE they got started.
Now anyone that can afford a few grand on a Uniqque or Hightower setup feels they have a right to call themselves cuemakers. They don't want to hear there are guys in front of them, guys who have been at it longer. They come out of the box asking for the same money Mottey, Tascarella, etc.. charge. When they don't get it, it's "I can't make no money building cues" well duh, no sh*t sherlock.
When Gus was building cues, there weren't 20 custom cuemakers. Now there are over 300 if not 400, if not more. Plus factor in the Pechauers, Schons, Vikings, Carolina's.. its a lot of wood that gets made every week. A lot of people are scrambling for the little money that is available. 30 years ago triple a shaftwood was just that, now triple a shaft wood is "c" shaftwood from 30 years ago. It's also not 1995 where people were making money hand over fist, and could keep 4-5 cues.
Now lets say all the guys stepped up and started raising their prices, what do you think would happen? Do you think that would solve all the problems financially? It wouldn't. Guys would still hunt down the "bargains", and 90% of the people who stepped up, would step back down. The pie is NOT big enough. There are not enough "big" collectors to absorb the amount of cues that are out there. That is why they are always for sale, regardless of how great they hit.
Cuemakers have an uphill battle, and every time a new cuemaker posts I can hear the collective "sigh" of the industry.

JV
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That's about as much truth as I have heard in a long while regaurding cues. Very nice observation. You are right, anybody can step into a cue lathe for about the same price they'd pay for a mid-range/high end cue. Are they cuemakers? Not really. Can they build a cue? Sure. Does it hurt the market? Who knows? There are many factors to consider with the current market, not only the number of cuemakers, although it is no secret the market is saturated. There's really no fix. As I said, it's a pipe dream & I really hate seeing guys struggle that have been around for a long time. As everything else in nature, the strong survive & the weak die. It would indeed be nice to see everybody succeed, but if they did we'd need thousands or millions of new players to support it. So let nature take it's course. My objective from the beginning was to show why cues cost what they do, and a man's work is worth something if it's quality work. But as you pointed out, there simply is not enough money to go around. It will be interesting to see who's who in the cuemaking world in 5 years from now, and how many of us there are.
 
qbilder said:
That's about as much truth as I have heard in a long while regaurding cues. Very nice observation. You are right, anybody can step into a cue lathe for about the same price they'd pay for a mid-range/high end cue. Are they cuemakers? Not really. Can they build a cue? Sure. Does it hurt the market? Who knows? There are many factors to consider with the current market, not only the number of cuemakers, although it is no secret the market is saturated. There's really no fix. As I said, it's a pipe dream & I really hate seeing guys struggle that have been around for a long time. As everything else in nature, the strong survive & the weak die. It would indeed be nice to see everybody succeed, but if they did we'd need thousands or millions of new players to support it. So let nature take it's course. My objective from the beginning was to show why cues cost what they do, and a man's work is worth something if it's quality work. But as you pointed out, there simply is not enough money to go around. It will be interesting to see who's who in the cuemaking world in 5 years from now, and how many of us there are.
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Thanks.. and about your last thought... I said that 5 years ago too, so you know what I think.. there will be 100 more cuemakers. Thats 100 more people saying they can't make no money.. :)

JV
 
Natural, all-wood cues for me w/ beautiful ring work. I like the "sleeper" or the "more than meets the eye" kinds: cue looks very plain to the untrained eye, but if you look closely you get to find out that the wood(s) is/are exotic or rare, the balance is great, the playability is exceptional, and you get the idea how expensive it may actually costs.

IMO, the more you put into the cue, the more it loses its "feedback" due to the presence of energy dampeners (eg glue, inlays):)
 
qbilder said:
That's $56 per hour on a $1200 cue at $825 in the good, not bad money, huh? Ok, now figure in that there's 40 of these cues per year. That's $33,000 per year, friggin poverty.
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Forgive my ignorance; I don't build cues, therefore I don't know what one might be capable of.

$33,000 for 580 hours of work in a year doesn't seem bad to me. I work well over 2000 a year and I'm not making much more than that myself. Seeings how alot of builders have backlogs that stretch into the years, is it not unreasonable to believe that a builder could build more cues within a year?
 
$33k a year, no ins, no SSI, self employment tax. I can't begin to describe all the downsides to self employment. It's great not having to mind the clock but a lil security would sure be nice.
 
JimS said:
$33k a year, no ins, no SSI, self employment tax. I can't begin to describe all the downsides to self employment. It's great not having to mind the clock but a lil security would sure be nice.
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That does not cover any insurance, or other benefits that most full time jobs offer. It's also not including taxes, which are roughly 24%, $22,800. Minus $500 month health insurance for a family of four, $16,800 And don't be fooled by so few hours. It's not really like that. There's time for machine repair/maintenance, cleaning up around the shop, etc. I don't know a full time builder who does not put in 12+ hr. days, six days a week.

Luckily, i'm not full time, nor do I build many cues per year. My household income is other than cues. But some fellows rely on cues.
 
J&D CUSTOMS said:
I was just wondering what you prefer. Very elaberate inlaid cues or the old school wood cues with no inlays , just really figured wood.With or without nice ringwork.
As far as playability , looks, and performance goes.
Let's see what is the majority votes.
Thanx,
Jim
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A cue with wood only and no inlays can still be pretty elaborate.
ButterflyRecut1.jpg
 
Just to get back to topic: I like a nice balance of wood grains, colors, and inlays on the same cue. Inlays can over-power the wood's natural beauty, but it can also enhance it when done right, especially when used to convey a particular theme.

JMHO...
 
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