What is most important to you personally when you purchase a Pool Cue Case?

[ribdoner]

per the inner-web wonderfull cases are mf'd in china, i've seen pics and they are sho nuff purdy, but, i can't let 1 iota of my hard earned cheese go to the commie bastards that are in powa.

As long as there is an option i'll support whatever incompetent jamock is renting the white house

what i'm looking for in a case is whatever strikes my fancy when i'm overcome with the impulse to buy

 

[guycrunch]

i have tried to stay away from this whole case thing, but i consider myself a case collector. i've owned just about every type of case at one time or another, and i have heard all of the pros and cons of all types. one of the discussions i have heard is the fact that the fellini-it's george-thomas-engles-etc cases are "air tight" and that "vacuum" protects the cues better. there are dozens more opinions as to the advantages and disadvantages each type of case has. there will never by a consensus "best" case.

i have only had an issue with a damaged cue from a case once, and that was a very long time ago. as joe stated, most of us won't have any issues with our normal use. as for the skateboard scenario, here's a situation that would be more apt to happen. you leave the pool hall and rest your case against the car to get your keys and unlock the car. you forget the case and as you back up the case falls under the tires and you run over it. i don't think many, if any, cases would survive that. i did see that exact scenario happen once but it was with a competition skeet shotgun in an aluminum case and there was virtually no damage to the gun. hey jimmyrayk, i seem to remember an on q 11x22 case that survived an suv that rolled over a few times!!! and no damage to the expensive cues inside but the case was a little muddy. that's a great test but i wouldn't want to try it.

it's like cars, nobody makes a bad car these days, ford, chevy, dodge, mercedes, they are all reliable so you drive what you like (or can afford). i happen to like most cases and i am as happy with my wave 4x8 as i am with my justis 3x6. i am usually not a big tube style case fan but my whitten lites are great, the 2x4's as well as the 6x12. and i do like the sound my it's george and thomas cases make as that lid pushes down, it's very reassuring.

so i think that you go with what you like and while it's great that different az-ers are very opinionated about their preferences that doesn't mean that all other opinions are wrong. the case market is very large and there will always be plenty of room for all of the different case makers to sell their own design cases. what i really like is that all of them seem to be making improvements to their products and some even share their ideas. that's the way it should be.

again these are only my own opinions and i realize that others will disagree, no problem.

guy

 

[Spade]

durabilty and protection. not so much worried about looks.
i do like the Lucasi cases. pretty hip

 

[JB Cases]

Because I once broke my beloved $1400 Schon cue due to it's flying out of a case that was knocked off a table the first thing that is important to me is that the cue remain in the case until I put my hand in it to take it out.

I personally feel better with that insurance that my cues are not going to immediately exit the case should it for any reason, my fault or otherwise, be tipped over when open.

Certainly most people take care with their equipment. But life is full accidents and if I owned something as precious as a Gina cue given to me by my wife then I would be sick and heart broken if somehow it were to fall out of a case and be seriously damaged. That's just me though. Other people probably don't put as much emotional stock in protecting their treasures and for them it wouldn't be a big deal to simply send it to Ernie for repair.

Accidents happen even to careful people. I have a bunch of stories collected from the years I owned Instroke through now. I need to get them all together for people to read. Meanwhile here is a collection from an earlier thread on this topic:

https://docs.google.com/View?id=dfs8sf4x_39zhs28dz4 Sorry I didn't take the time to make all the urls into live links yet.

When I was young I used a soft case. The Silver McDermott soft case was awesome. I was an early modifier as I hand sewed a strap onto it. Then a girlfriend bought me a grey porper and I thought I was the SHIT. The cue fit snugly inside and it seemed indestructible. I got teased about my "golf" bag in the Miscue Lounge by the oldtimers since I was I think the first one with a Porper case in that place.

My next case was a J.EF Q Case (Flowers) and that's the one which my cue fell out of and as such the one that launched me into case making as I first rebuilt the interior of that case to hold my cues. And that has been my platform ever since.

I do have one more story though which is a bit distressful. I had taken in some Vincintore cases on trade just to make a deal with a retailer to replace his stock with Instrokes.

So I had these Vincintore cases which were Whitten knockoffs in my shop collecting dust and not really knowing what to do with them. One night I wanted to take my one-of-a-kind Joss to Beezer's Billiards to let Mark Smith refinish it for me. I was in a hurry and I put the Joss butt in a Vincintore 1x2 and to my horror the bottom came off and my cue slid through a ring of nails as it exited the case through the bottom to the floor. The cue was scratched from the buttplate over the wrap and up into the forearm. You can email Mark at Mark Smith Cues to verify this.

The case had been made with a fiber board bottom and the nails had split the fiberboard so it was an accident waiting to happen. It was just perfect irony (or karma) that it happened to me because I was too lazy to walk across the shop and get an Instroke to transport my cues in.

Anyway, cue retention is paramount for me. Beyond that I prefer to have ease of use and storage methods that are comfortable.

Luckily for me we can build it.

 

[JB Cases]

Many millions of happy iPhone and Mac users would disagree with you. All of the Apple products I own are "Designed by Apple in California, assembled in China". It doesn't matter to me where my iPhone was put together because Steve Jobs stands behind it. Similarly, when ordering a case it didn't matter to me where it was being assembled because John Barton stood behind it.

I have an Ipad. I also have an Ipod. I dropped the ipod out of a second story window and it hit a brick wall and then a concrete floor. Survived. I bought a nice case for the Ipad and have dropped it twice since getting it several weeks ago. My daughter dropped it once and I dropped it once.

For my daughter I have ordered this case for the ipad - It's not here yet.

I will feel MUCH better about letting Jessie play with the Ipad once it's in that case.

The country of origin does not matter. Crap can be made anywhere and great stuff can be made anywhere. I suggest that anyone who does not believe that should listen to this NPR story about NUMMI.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/403/nummi

The Ipad was $950 and distastefully for me $150 more to buy it here in China than it would have been if I bought it in the USA. But that's another topic. The thing is durable and well made. I think that it's much stronger than a pool cue considering it's an electronic device. A pool cue is a long thin tapered contraption with several weak spots called joints. It is made to focus the energy into a small space. It is not made to take a lot of lateral stress. It is not a baseball bat or a hockey stick.

So to me subjecting a cue to unnecessary lateral stress is well, unnecessary.

I like to use Burton Spain's story about the family dog and the alligator. When explaining why he distrusts A-joints in cues to remove the buzzing that can occur he said that while some cue makers claim to have eliminated it using their techniques he likens it to the pet alligator that is trained not to eat the family dog. Maybe the alligator won't ever eat the dog but the dog would sure feel a lot better if the alligator wasn't there.

By the same token perhaps your cues will never fall out of a case and get damaged but when the ability to minimize that risk is so cheap and easy to get why not use that insurance?

And this reminds me that I need to make a hacked version of that kid's ipad case.......so I have something in the interim before the real one gets here.