Like many on here, I've spent my entire playing life searching for that gem, the best possible pool cue. My first cue was an Adam. I loved that cue, but people kept telling me I'd get more spin with a Meucci. Like an idiot I believed them. I did get spin with the Meucci, but the cue would twist and squirm in my arms like a puppy that you've held too long. There was near zero feel on the soft shots and on the hard shots, the whole cue would vibrate, violently up and down and side to side. Needless to say, that got old. So I bought a Predator with a Z shaft. While the butts have been changing back and forth I've been going back to the Z shaft almost every time I get tired of a cue. It just delivers so much precision. Every mm of elevation makes the cueball do something different. When you are in dead stroke, I venture to say that no other shaft is better, but then there is the small matter of the 99.9% of times when you are not. And when you're really not, it's hell playing with that shaft. You seem to throw every long shot out of the pocket when making it matters the most. It's like the pool cue equivalent of the girlfriend that you remember fondly, but she is completely nuts. "Why oh why did I ever break up with her, shes perfect I should try one more time", then the dinner plates start hitting the floor and you remember..
I bought some customs that weren't quite right and sold them immediately..Then I bought a McDermott, which was pretty good but some guy offered a lot of money for it so I sold it. So I bought a Mezz. And frankly, the Mezz cue with a WD 700 shafts is probably the best allround cue I've ever owned. It does everything well, and everyone who tries it seem to like it, no matter what their playing style happens to be. But then the voices in my head started whispering again..."This shaft is too mellow, it hides your flaws". So I bought a conical taper cue that hit so hard it was like running face first into a brick wall. Then I bought another one just like it. And they made me miserable, even if I played ok...and then I went back to the Z and now of course I've come to the same realization I did EVERY time I did that, that this shaft is just too damned difficult to play with for mortal men. THen I start playing with 14mm shafts, house cues, garbage cues and I start playing well. I have no idea whats up with that? And then the inevitable crash comes...
So I'm back on the search again. Looking for a cue with perfect balance, with a shaft that is fairly thin, but not too thin, low deflecting but not too low deflecting, that has a hit that is not too harsh but not too mellow, with the right weight and wrapless...It's hopeless, I'll never find it, but I guess like always my preferences change as I train more. The better I play, the more I favour a hard hit, hard tips and unforgiving cues. But then I have a bad night and doubt creeps in...I train and train and tweek the fundamentals endlessly, but can't change the feeling that maybe, just maybe with a different cue...I know it's bs, but I can't help myself and neither can anyone else I know with this dreadful, lifelong addiction. We're addicts beyond any help or recovery, no program can help us. The dragons we chase are every bit as elusive as the other addicts' dragons, though they won't kill us, it's just as hopeless of a pursuit and perhaps even less comprehensible to sane people watching. "Just buy a cue and train, they say". What do they know, about the regret of selling your best cues and the triumph of finding the one, though it never ever lasts? The nostalgic journeys to the back of the closet, wandering through the small forest of shafts and cues (forest of shame and misspent money) and spending more time than any woman trying to decide what to take to a night out? Nothing, that's what!
