What should I be aware of when looking at a Gold Crown 3 from a poolhall

[Newton]

What should I be aware of when looking at a Gold Crown 3 from a poolhall(Now w/Pics)

This is my first post in the forum after being a long time reader.

I have searched for information regarding Gold Crown 3 tables and there´s a lot!
To hopefully have a "collected" answer I dear to break my silence and make this post

A local pool hall is shutting down and are selling a lot of GC3 tables. I have no experience
with these tables, this be construction and maintenance. I have been working with these Danish
tables http://www.soren-sogaard.dk/ which has the nice construction of having steel rails with big
bolts pointing up against the slate for adjustment of straightens. These tables are very stable and
good to maintain.

I was told that the GC3 has no such adjustments, the only adjustments for leveling is the legs. You
need to stuff paper or other materials between the slate and the supporting constructions to
level out small individual level errors between the slate parts coming from people have been sitting
on them.

My question is then; Is this correct? If some one has been sitting on them and the "bed" or the construction
supporting the slate has gone "cricked" (spelled correct?) is the table then just trash and not worth the money?

Is there any other issues I should be aware of if I decide to buy on of these old tables? Spare parts, is this
easy for instance?

I have currently no place to mount the table so the table would be dismounted and stored for a later
hopefully bigger house, so I´m only thinking on this deal to "secure" me a table for later. Is this not
worth the hassle where a dismounted table might take damage? I would of course store it in a room with proper
temperature and humidity, but the parts would be stored in big shelves.

Should I just drop the deal and buy a new Olhausen,Soren Sogaard or something else when I finally get
the place for a table?

Asking price is close to $2000 for a 9 footer.

Long post to be my first, but I hope you did not fall a sleep in between lines

(Pictures show actuall table unfortunately taken with a cellphone. Pic of the whole table - see next page)

N

 

[NineBallNut]

is the table then just trash

Anyone that says a gold crown is trash is just biased against brunswick or played on one that was installed like sh*t. in my opinion, there is nothing to be aware of besides abuse to the rails and aprons. The gold crown is a well built table. I have installed many older crowns out of pool halls and they play great. Sure, some may say the rubber has changed since then. I say so what, even if you want to uprade the rubber it is still a great deal and a incredible playing table.

As a former installer, I will to you to wiggle the aprons, the ball storage box to see if any play is there. I have noticed that the inserts can loosen on those tables with enough abuse. Very easy fix but I thought I'd warn ya!

 

[Newton]

Well, I guess the person who told me this did not mean that the GC3 was poorly built, but that I would
be working a lot with the table to get it leveled (if some players had been sitting on it).
How do you work this out in case I discover this is the case when I someday start assembling
the table?

I read some where (can´t find the link page again) that many had left Brunswick tables because the later tables
where produced in Asia and not the US, where the quality had dropped. Any one who knows when this
potentially have happened (from GC3 to GC4 etc) ?

N

 

[Donny Wessels]

Hello, pretty much what 9ballnut said. I have some pool halls that have GC. the biggest thing in pool halls for GC is the aprins losing hardware and getting loose, just grap them and see if they move, also check the ball tray at the foot. The slate liners might be wearing out at the pockets from staples, in-and-out so many times. If the slate don't have cracks, there fine. Sitting on tables causes loose cushions not slate warping. I have some cushions in the first stages of going bad on GC3 in one particular place. $2000 is a good deal. Olhausen are great tables but there not Gold Crowns, in my opinion.

 

[Donny Wessels]

GC3 are better than GC4 in my opinion, you can see the quality difference, even with the extra leveling features and recessed pockets that the 4 offers.

 

[NineBallNut]

I don't know. I put up the gold crown 4 in our showroom to use as a demo. I have hit a lot of balls on it. I don't see that big a quality difference in the gold crown 3 and 4 besides the inserts in the rails were the pocket casting secure. Leveling the 4 is a breeze.

As for your concern about quality from asia. It is valid but look at it this way.. In every retail product category, there are american companies that put out garbage. There are Chinese companies who's standards are on the up and produce good products. Now back to pool. The gold crown comes mostly from south america and I can't see how that has affected the quality of the table. You may argue that most of brunswick's line has suffered some quality, but the gold crown has never suffered. JMO

 

[Newton]

Thank´s both of you.

I personally have always dreamed about having a GC since I love the look and feel of them. The only concern I have is if I run into
any problems in respect of leveling. Changing rubber is something I most likely would do anyway so this is not my biggest headache, but
if the process of leveling the slate is putting small paper bits in-between slate and bed, I´m not sure....
sdbilliards - Do you mean that these tables would not be unleveled by sitting on them where it only would make the cushions loose?

Does anyone know how the slate pieces is joint together? I guess they would be screwed to the bed but is there any joint between each
slates where one slate goes in to the others joint/groove? I have experienced playing on a GC table having a "jump" in-between the slates
making the ball "jump". This could of course be related to bad filling...

N

 

[NineBallNut]

Anytime you can feel the slate seems it is because of abuse to the table, or crappy install. liquid dowels between the slates before filling will assure the slates do no pop. What is used to fill the seams is debatable. I don't use paper to shim slates personally but to each his own.

 

[NoBull9]

The table is a good buy at 2000.00...Pool hall or not.

 

[Donny Wessels]

Newton, You should hire a professional to move your table. The GC have very strong frames and are generally pretty flat. You lay the slate on the frame and screw them down. At this point I lay 3 machinist levels one on each slate to make sure the center slate isn't lower from the weight, but like I said the frames are sturdy, this probably won't be a problem. If the seams (where the slates are butted together) need to be matched simply loosen the screws put either a hard wood wedge or a business card(s), tighten the screws and see if the seams are matched. Also it doesn't matter if the table is unlevel or seams are off now because the table needs to come apart anyways for the move. hire a respected professional mechanic and this table will play great.

 

[Newton]

sdbilliards: I do know the trick of matching the seems but the mentioned tables I have worked with has a groove which makes it impossible
for the slate to move in any kind of way vertically - which is very nice. When you put you´re filler of any type in between you are sure that the
slates can not move independently and make a "jump" for the balls in the seems. So I guess this is not implemented in the GC3 since nobody
mention it?

I would of course be aware that the leveling of the table is not critical before dismounting the table, but it would be a high priority when I would
put it together again. Using any type of wood wedge or business card(s) sound for me like a hard job. Would actually the business card(s)
solution hold up over time? I would guess that the weight of the slate would flatten the paper and make the leveling change over time.
In case you guys us this method, how much time do you leave the table resting on these before you actually finnish of the job and stretch the
cloth over? 1 day, 1/2 day or hour´s ? I would not like to end up with a table fully finished with cloth etc which gets unleveled after 2 weeks of playing
and need a new round of paper/wedge work :-(
Wedges would hopefully solve this but I´m not able to make wood wedges in a paper size thickens, so the question is then if there
is any standard "wedges packages" to buy which could do the job?

NineBallNut; "GC comes mostly from south america .." Is there any way of checking this? I´m not terrible fund of companies outsourcing the
manufacturing of what ever type of products - since this is basically just to increase the profit of their products. Brunswick has traditions in pool
making but I have the sneaking feeling that the focus has now changed and the % of focus on pool has maybe decreased. So I´m trying to establish
if I have a genuine Brunswick "south america" table offered or not? I would never buy a new $13000 GC4 table - simply because it´s a s**t load of money
for a product produced in Asia and the profit most likely tremendous.

Hiring a professional is not to easy, since there is not to many around here and the prices would most likely be insane.. I would guess the
US market is a little bit bigger than the European market which I´m in. How about those spare parts? Is there any new baskets, screw kits etc available or
would this end in a Ebay hunt?

N

 

[NineBallNut]

you can by wedge shims numerous places that start ultra thin and go as thick as you need. With a gold crown, if you level the frame good first, there should not need to be a ton of shimming. Anything you put under the slate could settle but I don't leave any time between shimming and felting.

.

 

[Tablemechanic]

Tables

Newton,

Fiirst of all, where are you located at? A Gold Crown 3 in decent shape is worth $2000, it all depends on your location. If you are in Europe, it would be harder to find them. As far as the slates go, you should have no problems with them as long as they are not cracked. I work on Gold Crowns almost every day and I have had very few problems with them. As far as comparing Gold Crown 3's to 4's. I would take a 4 all day long. I think the 3's have the lowest quality out of all of the Gold Crowns, bad rubber, inserts that come loose and have to be replaced, and the bronze finish that they used does not last. With that said they are still one of the best tables out there, the problems that I have said are very easy to fix, and belive me I have had to deal with all of them. You can not go wrong buying a Gold Crown, you will have a table if set up right that will play great for years.

You can find rubber, pockets, cloth, and hardware for setting a table up all over the internet. Try Muellers, they have almost everything.

If you are in Europe, I might look into buying a Gabriels pool table or a Diamond if you could find one.

Steve

 

[realkingcobra]

I don't care what kind of pool table you purchase, if you don't have someone worth a damn setting it up, you're going to end up with a table not worth a damn to play on! ANY pool table can be made to play at it's best, or at it's worst...it all depends on who does the work! As far as I'm concerned, the top 3 quality built tables in the world today are first, the Diamond's, the Brunswick's, and the Gabriels...and I'm only referring to the commercial tables here...not any home style tables, as home style tables would have to go to the Olhausen tables. I personally would be placing more importance on the mechanic that is going to set up the table first, then the table second, as any of the 3 tables listed above would be just fine as a pick of tables.

Glen

 

[Newton]

Nineballnut: I thinnk you got me a little wrong there. I did not say that the Asian version of the tables are worse in quality than the others. I simply sont like the fact that the company are charging rip off prices for something which is produced in a low cost country. The price here in Norway is - before you hopefully get some discount - $13000! When I can buy a new Dansih table for close to 1/3 of the price there must be someone using the BIG calculator with the BIG multiply buttom ;-) I have played on bothe GC 3 and 4 and they play good both of them, but I haver never done any type of work on them. I leave the discussion about the quality of a all US and Asia products to them who have worked on both and have many years of experience. Thanks for letting me now about the shims.

Tablemechanic: Thanks for the tip about Mullers. I'm in Norway and the pool hall has at least 8 to 10 GC3, so I hope I'm able to get my hands on one of them. My dream table would be the one in you're picture

Realkingcobra: I'm no novice in preping and mounting tables, I just have no experience with the mentioned table! I'm playing in the nathional series and hopefully I would continue to do that for some years which is the reason for getting a table at home. The table would be placed in a potentially big house when I get the money for it, where I'm chewing on securing me one of these tables or wait and buy a table when I get a house which could fit a table.

Thanks everybody. I think I'm leaning to buying one of them if I get the option. If not I wait and buy something from the mentioned table manufacturers. I have heard much good about Diamonds and Olhausen, but non of them is represented localy so I have no playing experience on any of them.

N

 

[NineBallNut]

you are correct, I misunderstood you. Biggest thing for any table as mentioned above are setup. Any commercial grade table is going to play great. Good Luck.

 

[Newton]

Was just wondering; Those brass corners which seems to turn brown, would this shine if you pollish them and maybe put some kind of clear coat over it to "save" them?

N

 

[Newton]

The pictures have been added after the initall post. Any comments on the "view". Apologize for bad pictures.

N