Tip discussion: All tips can be good, All tips can be bad.

Twenty years ago I use to use LePro's they were a good tip once you found the right one. They are incredibly inconsistent from tip to tip. I would go through 3-4 tips to find the right one. Near my end of use with them. I was starting to use a tip pic before install to test the hardness. My tip changing went to 1-2 tips to find the right one.

Layered tips fixed the inconsistency of single press cue tips

People were bitching about $25 tips back then too.

I don't remember why i changed my tip to a Moori 3 slow 20 years ago. But i loved the hit of it. I never had the chance of trying out another Moori 3 tip. So i can't say for the consistency of that model. I tired a Moori 4 slow and didn't like it.

Fast forward to Today. I needed to replace the Moori as it dried out and got hard. I looked on Amazon for a tip and the best rated tips were Kamui's. I go "It's $25 what the heck". I personally like the feel of the tip. But what i like the most out of these tips is. I've probably changed about 5-6 tips in the last year and I felt no difference in the feel of the tip from one to another even going from wood to Carbon Fiber.
 
buckshotshoey said:
Many people talk about the feel of a tip.. i.e... hard or soft. More properly, it should be talked about as In terms as Harmonics.

When vibrations travel through a shaft, it does so at a various Frequencies. This is measurable. It varies from shaft to shaft. But the tip will alter the frequencies of said shaft.

If measured fine enough, you can probably see the variation of frequency, even in tips from the same lot.

The reason Mr. Morri Came up with the idea of layered tips was too promote consistency from one tip to another.

Single layer tips have a higher percentage of variations from one to another (in my experience).
It's the reason many guys make milk duds from single layer tips. To make them more consistent from tip to tip. Whether on not this is what they had in mind when making them, it is the end result.
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When I make a batch of milkduds I find that about 2 out of 6 are what I call "magical tips." I use a phillips screwdriver to tap on them when they are on my workbench. Hold it like a soldering iron, lightly and drop the the point on the tip. The screwdriver is out at an angle, not straight up and down, you want it to bounce while holding it lightly. The "magical tips" have a specific sound and feel more bouncy. Not a squishy bounce, but a vibrating type bounce, harmonic resonance. The screwdriver doesn't just deaden on impact, it bounces/vibrates when you tap it.

It's hard to explain, but you can hear and feel the difference. The non-magical ones aren't bad, they are very consistent, but they don't quite match the magic ones in terms of feel.

Sacrificing 2 tips to get a magic one isn't a big deal when they cost 50 cents each. The non magic ones get put on house cues. But in all honesty they are fine tips, just not what I want on my cue. Sound and feel are huge to me. Soft tip users love the non-magic tips for the most part. They want a deadened feel.

My wife likes a soft tip on her cue so I usually give her the non magical ones because even if they are medium or hard they have that deadened feel that soft tip players like. The odd part is, you can get anything from a soft to extra hard tip that is magic... must have to do with the leather itself.
 
I would never argue about tips with a guy who started testing them at 8 years old, hell I didn't even know what a draw shot was at 8 years old, much less install cue tips.
 
boogieman said:
When I make a batch of milkduds I find that about 2 out of 6 are what I call "magical tips." I use a phillips screwdriver to tap on them when they are on my workbench. Hold it like a soldering iron, lightly and drop the the point on the tip. The screwdriver is out at an angle, not straight up and down, you want it to bounce while holding it lightly. The "magical tips" have a specific sound and feel more bouncy. Not a squishy bounce, but a vibrating type bounce, harmonic resonance. The screwdriver doesn't just deaden on impact, it bounces/vibrates when you tap it.

It's hard to explain, but you can hear and feel the difference. The non-magical ones aren't bad, they are very consistent, but they don't quite match the magic ones in terms of feel.

Sacrificing 2 tips to get a magic one isn't a big deal when they cost 50 cents each. The non magic ones get put on house cues. But in all honesty they are fine tips, just not what I want on my cue. Sound and feel are huge to me. Soft tip users love the non-magic tips for the most part. They want a deadened feel.

My wife likes a soft tip on her cue so I usually give her the non magical ones because even if they are medium or hard they have that deadened feel that soft tip players like. The odd part is, you can get anything from a soft to extra hard tip that is magic... must have to do with the leather itself.
Click to expand...

I know its asking too much but if you're a guy who make videos etc. I would love if you would make a video from your workbench with the method highlighted in red and explaining it in details (Ofcourse if you can do that)...I'll give you a like and a sub to your youtube if you do :D Because this is exactly what I want, is a method to find the "Magical" tip, you call it magical tips which is a fine name, I call it "superman tip" -- I think your method also works for any type/brand of tips even the layered tips also have some "Magical tips" and "Not so magical tips" Ive read your comment a couple of times but I think the sound and bounce would be explained better in a video

Thanks in advance.
 
smoochie said:
I know its asking too much but if you're a guy who make videos etc. I would love if you would make a video from your workbench with the method highlighted in red and explaining it in details (Ofcourse if you can do that)...I'll give you a like and a sub to your youtube if you do :D Because this is exactly what I want, is a method to find the "Magical" tip, you call it magical tips which is a fine name, I call it "superman tip" -- I think your method also works for any type/brand of tips even the layered tips also have some "Magical tips" and "Not so magical tips" Ive read your comment a couple of times but I think the sound and bounce would be explained better in a video

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
I don't really do videos. I'm also out of duds currently. I use the bench vise in my shed and it's cold AF out there now, usually don't like to do them when in freezing temps as I have no idea how it would change the tips and I leave them in overnight.

Imagine how you hold a drum stick to drum on a snare drum... it's basically that, you hold the handle kind of balancing it lightly between your fingers and you're listening and feeling as you do it. The magic ones bounce more and sound higher pitched, kind of melodic in a way. It's not really an "is this good or bad" type test, just the higher pitched and bouncier more tonal ones are better than the others. It really is a feel thing and I don't know if it would come over well on video.

I don't think I've ever made a bad dud, they are always an improvement over a non-pressed elkmaster, but there are some better than others.

A similar reaction is lightly clacking pool balls together while holding in your hands. I'm not meaning the tips sound or feel like pool balls, but they kind of have a similar vibrating feeling. They don't just deaden instantly, they have a bounce to them.

Now imagine tapping a pool ball with a screwdriver... now imagine doing it to a piece of foam... that's kind of the concept.
 
I bounce them in the cup holder of one of the captain's chairs I have. I can tell by the way they bounce and sound which tips are harder than others. The soft ones tend to play a bit too soft for me. It saves me time on installing a less-than-ideal one.
 
I still have a Joss brand med single layer tip on one of my shafts. Holds chalk great and plays just fine. I've never found a layered tip I like. Not even ultra skins. Triangles or Elkmaster simply hold chalk better than layered tips and hold shape just fine. Just my personal preference.
 
I will add one fact to this thread - Over time leather dries out and gets harder. When you buy a new tip how old is it actually? No way of knowing, could this be the difference maker in getting a 'magical' tip when the last one you got, same brand was hard and glazed over after minimal play?
 
Seems like it has been a few weeks since I talked about tips. Here is the umpteenth repeat so for those that have read this umpteen-1 times, your time could be better spent with a beer or a broad.

First off, I don't use or install layered tips. I can be cutting on a premium tip and find a layer that just crumbles. Maybe send it out for somebody to have a similar experience.

I use Elkmasters. I often milk dudded them in the past, seems wasted effort lately. I have used the float test years ago but these days I think that a cheap scale and calipers are better options.

My technique: Buy a box of fifty Elkmaster tips.

Grab the calipers and measure the diameter of one tip. Lock down the calipers and check the size of that same tip using the calipers as a gauge now. Quickly gauge the diameter of the other forty-nine tips, calipers still locked. Now measure the height of a tip, that first one if you want to be a bit anal. Same thing, lock the floating jaw in place while on the first tip. Now using the caliper as a gauge, measure the other forty-nine tips. Never found variance here, just have to verify nothing weird before weighing tips. Now we know they are all the same size.

Now on to the scales. The last tips I weighed long ago had nine superlight tips. There is about three dollars worth of tips gone to hell, I give them a fling. The rest of the tips fell into groups. Three or four were super heavy. I wanted to install them and try them to see what I found out but a named storm or two rained on my plans. The other tips fell into two groups where each tip in a group weighed very close to the exact same thing as every other tip in that group.

These two groups are gold, and I got over thirty-five of them for less than thirty-five dollars and less than an hour of my time. I still have some of those tips but I have been well pleased with every one of them that I installed on one of my shafts and I have had zero unhappy customers.

There are some premium Elkmasters sold now, maybe Elkmaster Pro? Anyway, three for ten or twelve bucks the last I knew. I strongly suspect the selection process for these tips are much the same as mine. Perhaps they put them in a hardness tester too, I have never felt the need.

For less than a hundred bucks this will give someone a lifetime supply of tips or you can sell a few and make a few bucks. I have been as pleased with these selected tips with or without going through the dudding process. However, it is worth knowing that I don't like real hard tips. I bring my duds back down to roughly factory height after they get through swelling. I get little or no mushrooming and very little tip shaping required.

Hu
 
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