Very well put. You got it right on. It's easy to think the latest equipment will improve your game. Don't underestimate what it will take to lift your game to the next level.
Questions about switching to carbon fiber
- Thread starter grobbs
- Start date
No lie Mosconi became skillful with work on building skill.
Some people buy into notion all they need is latest, greatest tool to be great.
That is what advertising & marketing campaign do, hype & sell stuff.
I understand what you're saying. You're definitely not wrong. I'm getting a CF shaft. My FargoRating is 650. I'm not going to jump 100 points overnight.
However, it's not always that simple. I live in Texas. It gets to be 90+ degrees at least six months out of the year. Unless you always remember to get your cues out of your car, they will wear fast. Hell, my shafts would warp in New York where they would *never* see the trunk of a car, nor temperatures over 95 degrees. Carbon Fiber is a superior material that's going to keep its straightness under harsher conditions for a longer amount of time, possibly a lifetime.
That lack of variance helps. Will it help a novice? Will it be better than a *new* and high quality wood cue? Probably not. Novices miss for many reasons that have nothing to do with the fractions of an inch improvements carbon fiber offers. Hell, we can say the same thing about most high ranked amateurs, and even some professionals. But, the latest and greatest *is* better. I can't say if it will produce the greatest game of pool ever played but I do believe it will minimize equipment defects that could cause misses.
I think wood teaches a new player a lot over a long period amount of time that a CF wouldn't. All things critical to their further or more advanced development. I'd bet that most CF shaft owners don't have the stroke to support it if you consider all players that shoot casually, including league play. For those that really earn their best game, maybe then the CF might have something to offer.
I've NEVER left a cue in a trunk over night or longer than a trip home. That doesn't seem like a benefit to me.
oh, overnight isn't the problem. You can leave your cues in your car overnight all you want.
My recommendation is go back to the tip of your choice you've been enjoying, and then start back at center ball! Only up and down axis then, after comfortable with the shot line with the small diameter, start applying very little English ( right and left ) until you get more comfortable! That shaft you got is a whole other animal in general but also jumping from 13mm all the way down to 12 is huge. Adjustment takes time and effort but it may pay off. I would jump to any crazy conclusions until you have at least given a couple months of play with the carbon.
I had the same cue from high school to about 35 years old. That cue definitely sat in a trunk for months at a time during college. By the time I got my CF replacement, the cue was too valuable to just leave in a trunk. Plus I want it in my house to play on my table. I am fairly clumsy at times. That cue has hit the floor dozens of time. My nice pretty butt has lots of dings in it, the shaft has none.
That attitude is why so many of your shafts warped.
Well if you buy a cheap Sneak Pete master your equiptment, become a great player, at some point someone, or some manufacture of quality Pool equiptment will give you FREE STUFF to use like Allison Fisher. Sponsored, and paid to use CueTech. Because Allison's skill made her an attractive people to affailate with.
Well, it doesn't really matter. You can play with a wood cue all you want. It doesn't change the fact that carbon fiber is a superior material and the benefits of it aren't just specific to better players. There are practical advantages *everyone* can enjoy.
IMO the main benefits of CF are its durability and super-slick finish. I've tested quite a few and there is no big difference in how they play. Maybe a little better energy transfer but that's about it. Deflection is about the same as any good wood ld shaft.
This is where we begin to go outside our pay grade. Energy transfer is huge but we're only observing this as pool players. I would be curious to see how much a wood shaft flexes at 5 mph, 10 mph, 15, mph, 20 mph, and 25 mph and then see what happens with CF. My suspicion is, wood flexes very little under 10 mph and a great deal at 25 mph and CF doesn't flex at all (or very little). Type of wood and construction (spliced shafts) may also influence wood's performance. Either way, it would be great to see tests in a controlled environment, which is something the average pool player can't really provide.
Only break shots even approach 20+mph speeds. I tested a Revo 12.9 pretty thoroughly and it was easier to move the ball around. Just has a tad more power. Pretty obvious if you hit one.
I would have highly recommended the "revo" shaft if you asked prior to buying. I have not tried the Defy and I am not going to dis the brand as I know for fact McDermott is a high quality brand and cues so Defy may be engineered really good. But you cannot beat the inventors of the CF when it first came about Predator did it first and their Revo is just to another level. I tried couple of CFs too, Revo is just too good.
I think you're missing my point. We're only observing this as pool players. I would be fascinated to see some real scientific data.
Like, I highly doubt 20 mph is the threshold for when wood flexes. It's probably less. And it's probably different for maple than it is for purple heart. It's also probably different for a one-piece maple shaft than it is for a 10-piece maple shaft. And, to complicate things, we might not be able to observe it since we're accustomed to these variances, and we're watching it in full speed.
I’d love to see a practical test measure and compare energy transfer of shafts. I’ve seen it done with tips. Regardless of personal anecdotes and theories about the speed of sound, I’m pretty skeptical and want to see a real experiment before I start buying in.
I'm not an engineer and such data holds zero interest for me. How the thing PLAYS is ALL that matters. All the behind-the-curtain Wizard of Oz stuff is just something for techies to argue. Not me. CF is clearly a better material for a number of reasons. Those who think its some kind of flash-in-the-pan fad better get used to seeing them.
For any scientific data and experiment to be measured you must reduce the human interaction as much as possible, in my opinion especially with billiards stroke. If you want to measure the data of the comparison for shafts and energy transfer; a machine must be used. I don't care if you think you can stroke the same way and same speed. It is just impossible nobody can do that.
I always find it funny when people compare deflection of shafts by using their own stroke and putting some type of a ruler, I am sorry but that doesn't work. If people can invest in developing an engineering robot that does the stroking, then it is hard to come to a conclusion.
I know Bob Meucci made a bot that shoots, with that machine you can measure deflection and also can measure energy transfer all you want, as long as you don't have a human arm involved in the stroking process, but some people don't believe Bob. So my question is how about you design your own robot? Why is it hard to design a robot that strokes the cueball with a certain set of speed, i.e. you can put a variable of speed then maybe manipulate that value, then we can talk about experiments.
The amount of initial flex of the front of the cue is proportional to cue speed (for a given offset). That's true for both CF and wood. There is no threshold. But I think flexing is a very minor contributor to or detractor from energy transfer.
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Predator made a much better machine. Here are some articles describing a series of experiments that was done on a prototype in the 1990s:
Jacksonville Experiment Articles