Regional Cues

Ken_4fun

Ken_4fun

AzB Silver Member
Silver Member
I would like some opinions and encourage posts for your input.

Here are my thoughts.

It seems that cues are very regional. As a cue maker gets more recognizable, that his cues seem to migrate out.

Some bullets.

Balabushka Cues - They appear to have two locations, especially with the original owners. New York (Northeast US), and Florida. I assume as the New Yorkers retired they moved to Florida and took their cues with them.

Gus - Again the Northeast, but seem to have a broader area including Ohio, Kentucky, etc. One of my Gus cues came from upstate New York and the other from Kentucky.

More common and more modern day.

Gilbert - When I lived in Springfield, Missouri, it seemed that there were two brands of cues made world wide as I only saw Meucci and Gilbert cues. I mean everyone in Springfield seemed to play with a Gilbert cue. At that time Andy marked his cues with "G".

Tad - Tad are ones that I guess fall in both vintage and current. Again, I have bought several over the years (and sold them too), and it was ALWAYS dealing with folks from California.

Exceptions

I don't know how many cues Southwest have made, but it is tons of them. They IMO, are the most common, "custom", cue. I have moved to many cities in the US and there is always a Southwest cue there.

Am I the only one that finds this interesting? I have sent cues all over the world, but living here in the US, the most common production cue is Meucci and the most common custom would be Southwest.

What are your thoughts?

Best of rolls to all.

Ken
 
Southwest is production that you can customize. And very common, over 200 cues a year out of their shop.

GB cues were sold through 'dealer' relationships at pool halls all over the northeast in the 1960s.
 
ideologist said:
Southwest is production that you can customize. And very common, over 200 cues a year out of their shop.

GB cues were sold through 'dealer' relationships at pool halls all over the northeast in the 1960s.
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Could you elaborate on the GB cues? Did he build them (without customer input) and then have them a pool hall? Or did he use the pool hall as a way of interacting with potential customers?

I agree 100% that Southwest cues are a production cue that you can customize. Probably the best explaination that I have ever heard.

Ken
 
Ken_4fun said:
Could you elaborate on the GB cues? Did he build them (without customer input) and then have them a pool hall? Or did he use the pool hall as a way of interacting with potential customers?

I agree 100% that Southwest cues are a production cue that you can customize. Probably the best explaination that I have ever heard.

Ken
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We are lucky enough in Rochester to have a few guys shooting who were at the halls in the 1960s and saw Mike Sigel come up.

You told the counter man you wanted a cue, paid your $150 and got a cue with 2 shafts. I'm not sure how much input you got, it didn't sound like much, just a basic 4 pointer with veneers. Maybe Titlists. I will follow up with a couple of the guys and update this thread.
 
I also agree that Southwest cues are production that are customized. In the knife community, we call the high end/customized production knives, midtech's.

The majority of custom cues, that I find around New Orleans and Southeast Louisiana, is Jensen and Erwin cues.

I only know of one person in all of Louisiana that has a Southwest.
 
Here in Wisconsin all of the WI. made cues are popular, McDermott, Viking, Jacoby, Schon, Pechauer, Jackson, Runde, Schmelke, etc. I am not sure I have ever seen a Meucci yet. Predator and OB are both popular break cues. As far as LD shafts it seems that the Jacoby is getting almost as popular as Predator and a lot of McDermott G-core and I-shafts too. Far and away the Jacoby jump cue is most popular for jumpers.
 
Lomax and Josey are probably the 2 most popular customs around the Carolinas. Quite a few Sly's around my area as well. There are around 10 or so Southwest's that I have seen around NC, sure there's a few I haven't seen as well.
 
Out here in Northern California Kenny Koo, Tom Coker, and Jim Pierce seem to be big favorites. Everyone seems to have a Koo Cues patch on their case too. Benders and Prewitts have a presence here as well but to a little lesser degree.
 
Baron said:
Out here in Northern California Kenny Koo, Tom Coker, and Jim Pierce seem to be big favorites. Everyone seems to have a Koo Cues patch on their case too. Benders and Prewitts have a presence here as well but to a little lesser degree.
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A Koo cue There about as rare as hens teeth arent they?
 
When I started playing pool in 1974 in Tampa, FL at Bakers Billiards most of the top shooters had Palmer cues, these were made in NJ. We had many Cue makers around Tampa through the years.
Rocky Tillis
Ricco Cuereventas
Wayne Gunn
Larry "Larue" Haymes.

At Bakers back then, nobody even mentioned Balabushka or Szamboti, every now & then Rambo was mentioned and some of us had Rich cues.
 

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fastone371 said:
Here in Wisconsin all of the WI. made cues are popular, McDermott, Viking, Jacoby, Schon, Pechauer, Jackson, Runde, Schmelke, etc. I am not sure I have ever seen a Meucci yet. Predator and OB are both popular break cues. As far as LD shafts it seems that the Jacoby is getting almost as popular as Predator and a lot of McDermott G-core and I-shafts too. Far and away the Jacoby jump cue is most popular for jumpers.
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That's because all the bow hunters found out they make great bows and they are all using them as such.
 
Ken_4fun said:
Could you elaborate on the GB cues? Did he build them (without customer input) and then have them a pool hall? Or did he use the pool hall as a way of interacting with potential customers?

I agree 100% that Southwest cues are a production cue that you can customize. Probably the best explaination that I have ever heard.

Ken
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So I have an update. In Rochester, a friend of George's ran a pool room here.

Sam, his friend, went to NYC regularly to pick up cues to sell.

If you weren't a personal friend, you didn't get to call George for a cue. Sam could get one for you, though.

No customization, just whatever the maker sent along that month.

Players who did call in were rebuffed with "Who are you? I don't know you" and no order was taken. This was in the late 60s even

Mike Sigel was known enough to be able to order them
 
In the pre-internet days, from what I could tell, you needed to know someone who could order a cue for you. We were at the mercy of their connections. In central CA, the local pool room owner knew Gus Szamboti and Dan Janes. Those were the two custom cues that you could have made. A couple of local players ventured out to some of the Pro-Am tournaments in Reno and Las Vegas and brought back cues from cuemakers like Joss West. But other than that we didn’t know much about other cuemakers.

In those days, we were also at the mercy of the willingness of the owner to place an order for you. After I moved to NJ, I played with the local favorite, Meucci, which was sold in the local pool room. After a couple years, I decided that I really wanted to order a custom cue. I talked to the owner who said he couldn’t help me because they only dealt with Meucci. About a year later in 1991, I found a room owner in Ohio who had a South West cue that was near completion. I learned about South West cues in an article from one of the pool magazines. I drove 600 miles each way to pick it up. When I got back to the pool room, the owner noticed my new cue and asked why I didn’t try to buy one through him.
 
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ideologist said:
So I have an update. In Rochester, a friend of George's ran a pool room here.

Sam, his friend, went to NYC regularly to pick up cues to sell.

If you weren't a personal friend, you didn't get to call George for a cue. Sam could get one for you, though.

No customization, just whatever the maker sent along that month.

Players who did call in were rebuffed with "Who are you? I don't know you" and no order was taken. This was in the late 60s even

Mike Sigel was known enough to be able to order them
Click to expand...

Thanks.

I tried to give you some positive feedback but it wouldn't let me.

Ken
 
Upstate NY

In Elmira NY, almost every serious player at Elmira College was using a Palmer cue, so that's what I wanted. I bought two Palmers back in 1974 and 1975 and there were two vendors in Elmira at the time.

One was a vending machine company, Servomation, which also sold billiard supplies and employed pool table mechanics. A friend and I ordered a Palmer Model A from them $50.00 and two week delivery time.

The following year I bought my own Palmer. This time I ordered it from the local pool hall. I went upmarket and ordered a Model B which was $65.00 and again roughly a two week wait.

Believe it or not, $50.00 was alot of money for a cue in 1974. Department store cues were around $25.00, so the cost of a Palmer was double.

Out of my interest in Palmer cues, I have come to know that there not only were but still are a large number of Palmers in New Jersey. For anyone who doesn't know, Palmers were made in Elizabeth, NJ.
 
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I live in Maryland where Joss is located and probably still the most popular cue. There are several other custom makers as well in Maryland which I never heard of until I joined AZB.
 
West TX
See Jacobys, Pechauers, Joss's.... As well as Some Custom stuff around.
This feels more like a semi-custom thread though...


* wish I had started this crap earlier *
 
When I lived in Pittsburgh 20 years ago it was a lot of Tim Scruggs and Paul Mottey with beginners using either Meucci or McDermott. One of the regulars bought the all white Cuetec and I'm sure the first Volkswagen Beetle was looked at the same way we looked at that cue.
 
Living in Oklahoma i have a bunch fairly close by: Farris, Kent Taylor, Ingram,Owens,Gilbert,Haley,Diveney,Patrick,Treadway, Durbin and probably a couple i'm forgetting. Very good craftsmen and good guys to boot. Hope to see them in Olathe at Shooter's nxt week.
 
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