Weight and Balance aside, Does the butt have anything to do with how well a cue plays

[hang-the-9]

If butts didn't matter, cue makers would be using the cheapest wood for coring dowels and handles.
Why bother with maple and rosewoods?
Just use plywood.

Ah but you could if you did not care about the feel of the hit or how it looked. You can make a gun out of gold and diamonds but what holds the mechanism and barrel won't help you actually send the bullet any straighter or further. It all just helps the person support the barrel better, the barrel and the bullet are the important things. Once the bullet fires, the gun is useless, and what happens to the bullet when it travels and leaves the barrel and flies through the air is what makes it hit the target. The butt just holds the shaft so you can strike it against the cue to do the work.

 

[ShootingArts]

A butt story ...

If butts didn't matter, cue makers would be using the cheapest wood for coring dowels and handles.
Why bother with maple and rosewoods?
Just use plywood.

Joey,

Have you hit with a plywood cue butt? They hit a ton! Couple one with a REVO shaft and it hammers balls into holes like a heavy nail gun driving twenty penny nails. A beast! I am talking Dymondwood to be specific of course. Did anyone ever go back into production?


On to the butt story. I have told it a handful of times but the OP may not have seen it. My sister gave me one of the very cheap Budweiser cues. I think cue and case sold for less than ten bucks, it was terrible. Got to feeling silly in my shop one day and I went to work. Changed out the joint collar and pin, turned a nice shaft for it, quality ferrule, Moori tip. The one thing I couldn't change was the butt itself. I had drilled and put the longest hard maple dowel I could put in it just drilling from the joint end when I put the pin in. The primary thing that remained the same was the soft butt wood which seemed to be something like poplar.

The cue hit better than it did but still no mistaking it was a POS. I could make balls with it, the stick just felt dead though. Try as you might, you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear and butts do matter. Cue butts too!

Hu

 

[CocoboloCowboy]

All you need is the Magic Potion. Can not tell you were to find, price, but if you find, use per instruction, you will be great Pool Player over nite.

Sad face it people do not want to spend the time it take to be great at anything. Talk to any Top Pro Level Player in any sport, and ask home many hours a days, weeks, or years it took to become a top competitor.

The answer will not be started playing yesterday day, the true answer will be years of practice, and competition.

 

[lfigueroa]

The butt of a cue will not make it play better or worse but it may make you play better or worse.

Lou Figueroa

 

[RiverCity]

Joey,

Have you hit with a plywood cue butt? They hit a ton! Couple one with a REVO shaft and it hammers balls into holes like a heavy nail gun driving twenty penny nails. A beast! I am talking Dymondwood to be specific of course. Did anyone ever go back into production?

.....

Hu

I dont know if they still bother doing it, but for a while Schon was using a plywood handle they made. Purple heart and maple if memory serves.

 

[ShootingArts]

flat laminate shaft

I dont know if they still bother doing it, but for a while Schon was using a plywood handle they made. Purple heart and maple if memory serves.

I still use a flat laminate shaft. Somebody(Atlas?) put the blanks on sale for about ten bucks each to try to get people to start using them. Not great, not bad, one more option out there.

Hu

 

[HQueen]

Plywood? Lol. Gluing maple and Purple Heart together isn’t plywood. It’s a laminated handle. Quite a difference.
I’m sure a lot will disagree but I think the butt is 90% of the hit of a cue.
Easy to test this. Take your favorite shaft and couple it with the cheapest POS butt you can find, see if it stills plays like your favorite.
Or, take a carbon fiber shaft, couple it with different butts and you’ll notice the difference in the feel.

 

[hang-the-9]

Plywood? Lol. Gluing maple and Purple Heart together isn’t plywood. It’s a laminated handle. Quite a difference.
I’m sure a lot will disagree but I think the butt is 90% of the hit of a cue.
Easy to test this. Take your favorite shaft and couple it with the cheapest POS butt you can find, see if it stills plays like your favorite.
Or, take a carbon fiber shaft, couple it with different butts and you’ll notice the difference in the feel.

I would say the hit feel of the cue is much more in the tip and shaft than in the butt. My guess is 25% of the feel comes from the butt of the cue. It may actually not be too hard to measure, feel is vibrations. You just need to measure how much vibration that starts at the tip makes it to the handle and at what frequency, and you should be able to say how much feel gets through there. I mean it's not a trivial thing to measure for just anyone off the street but I bet someone like Dr Dave or Fred Angir (who works in material sciences) should have the knowledge and equipment to measure things with numbers vs just guesses.

I will tell you from my experience with using shafts on all sorts of different butts, my Ned Morris cue and two different $60 McDermott Lucky cues I have with the same shaft have very very similar hit feel.

 

[pinkspider]

may I suggest that you dont buy anything yet, try a variety of shafts from friends to get a feel for what works for your cue.

it could well be the case that you have a perfect match of butt and shaft in your hands that doesnt work (for you) in any other configuration, or you could have a gem of a butt that matches well with most shafts and which case it should be safe to just buy a shaft.

how 'well' a cue plays is a little too subjective a topic. i bought six cue butts before i found one i liked enough to match with my revo. to me at least, they all played differently.

 

[HQueen]

I would say the hit feel of the cue is much more in the tip and shaft than in the butt. My guess is 25% of the feel comes from the butt of the cue. It may actually not be too hard to measure, feel is vibrations. You just need to measure how much vibration that starts at the tip makes it to the handle and at what frequency, and you should be able to say how much feel gets through there. I mean it's not a trivial thing to measure for just anyone off the street but I bet someone like Dr Dave or Fred Angir (who works in material sciences) should have the knowledge and equipment to measure things with numbers vs just guesses.

I will tell you from my experience with using shafts on all sorts of different butts, my Ned Morris cue and two different $60 McDermott Lucky cues I have with the same shaft have very very similar hit feel.

I used to think 90% was the shaft. Now I’m in the opposite camp. Part of it was my own experience, part came from a friend who is a top player in my area when he switched to the Revo. He went through several different butts until he found one he liked. Another part was a phone conversation with Mike Lambros who told me the butt was the hit and he could prove it. We spent some time talking about it.

Several factors come into play, woods used is one, style of cue such as full spliced vs cored vs non cored.
Hercek says every cue he builds is full spliced, even if it’s a Merry Widow it will have a full spliced core.

A lot are in the camp where tonal woods make the best hitting cues. Vibrations are the “feel” of a cue. I believe this to be very important because I think they help us to measure how hard to hit whether that a conscious our unconscious thing.

These are of course just my opinions. I could be wrong about everything. Trying different butts with different wood such as ebony vs maple vs purpleheart vs cocobolo etc is a good way to at least determine how much you think a butt makes the difference.

Another thing would be the taper of the butt. Most cues are straight conical tapers. Some such as Southwest have a parabolic taper. Why would they do that if it didn’t have any influence on the hit?

 

[chainsaw]

The butt has a lot to do with your cue. the way it's weighted. Schone for example tends to be back weighted. Predator more center weighted. I shoot with and A&E(Artititic Engineering) custom cue. Weight further up front or forward weighted. If you really like your current Butt keep it? you can experiment till the cows come home with shafts. Geez o mercy so many of them.