Your Home Table's Balls

[rackmsuckr]

We have a set of generic balls and a set of Centennials. Also a red circle cueball.

Diamond Pro (with the deep shelf) 4 7/16" pockets
Mali 820
Centennials
Diamond light

 

[Gregg]

Yeah, I play with custom balls myself. I don't like playing with balls that are completely spherical, so I spec my balls to be slightly egg-shaped such that they wobble to the right to compensate for my crooked stroke.

Seriously though, what exactly do you mean by "custom balls"? I admit I don't know a lot about equipment, so I'm assuming you just mean that you customized the outward appearance (paint) of the balls, but the weight, size, and material are standard. Is there a standard/specification for weight, size, material for pool balls?...or do they allow for slightly different specs like golf balls?

jsp <~~~ knows nothing about equipment

I normally don't respond to common folk, but this time I make an exception.

No, really, I am just kidding. Centennial Balls are commonly considered the most coveted ball set on the market, are seem to be the most widely accepted. The television balls are nice if you want to tape video or for televising, since you can more clearly see the differences in balls that may be indistinguishable on video, like for example the two and four balls.

The only custom balls are the cheesy once you can get with your name engraved in them.

 

[Barbara]

Egg-shaped balls?

Hey Linda!

If you ever run into Fran Crimi, you should ask her about shooting with egg-shaped cue balls!!

Does anyone remember a while time ago about a beer commercial that had a guy holding a "pool shooting hen"? He walked into a bar and made a bet and then held the hen and aimed its pool shooting end at the object ball and voila! The hen played pool!

Well, it was Fran shooting at these egg-shaped cue balls from underneath the hen that did it! She said it took her 36 hours of takes to make the 30-second commercial because she had to learn how to shoot the egg-shaped CBs! Plus, the hen would take bites out of her arm, being in such a sensitive spot for the most part.

It was a truly great commercial!! It made the list for "Best Ten" on ESPN, IIRC.

Barbara

 

[rackmsuckr]

Hey Linda!

If you ever run into Fran Crimi, you should ask her about shooting with egg-shaped cue balls!!

Does anyone remember a while time ago about a beer commercial that had a guy holding a "pool shooting hen"? He walked into a bar and made a bet and then held the hen and aimed its pool shooting end at the object ball and voila! The hen played pool!

Well, it was Fran shooting at these egg-shaped cue balls from underneath the hen that did it! She said it took her 36 hours of takes to make the 30-second commercial because she had to learn how to shoot the egg-shaped CBs! Plus, the hen would take bites out of her arm, being in such a sensitive spot for the most part.

It was a truly great commercial!! It made the list for "Best Ten" on ESPN, IIRC.

Barbara

Barb, that is the funniest thing I have heard in quite awhile!

 

[iacas]

Iacas, I see your gonna get the Dark Green 860 Simonis. I bought the same thing when I bought my table because it goes well with the dark matte finish on my table. I have an 9' Olhausen too. I thought I'd mention though that since I've been playing on it for over a year, I've noticed that particular color seems to absorb a ton of light and the corners of my table look darker than the rest of the table. My light is a 4 light RAM with 4 60 watt bulbs, but you couldn't tell. I've been seriously considering going to halogen bulbs to hopefully lighten it up a bit. The next time I recover the table, I don't think I'm gonna use the same color. The bulbs are 32" from the slate. Anyone else use this cloth??

I'm not using a traditional pool table light. I'm using can lighting in the ceiling. The three over the table will be on a separate dimmer switch from the rest of the room.

I heard that the spruce looks a lot darker on the sample card than it does in real life. Otherwise it would look almost black! But yeah, the picture someone posted above is the table I'm getting.

(P.S. Not the matte finish, the glossy one...)

 

[Steve - Detroit]

Iacas, I see your gonna get the Dark Green 860 Simonis. I bought the same thing when I bought my table because it goes well with the dark matte finish on my table. I have an 9' Olhausen too. I thought I'd mention though that since I've been playing on it for over a year, I've noticed that particular color seems to absorb a ton of light and the corners of my table look darker than the rest of the table. My light is a 4 light RAM with 4 60 watt bulbs, but you couldn't tell. I've been seriously considering going to halogen bulbs to hopefully lighten it up a bit. The next time I recover the table, I don't think I'm gonna use the same color. The bulbs are 32" from the slate. Anyone else use this cloth??

I have that cloth and know exactly what you mean. Always looks darker toward the other end of the table regardless of which end I'm looking from. I switched from 60W to 75W (the flourescent type) and that helped alot but didn't totally eliminate it.

As far as the balls, I seem to remember reading that the company that makes the balls for Brunswick and Aramith is called Saluc and they make the balls to each company's own specs.

 

[JoeyInCali]

I have Centennials. A red circle and measle cue balls.
I just use the cent. cueball now.
Measles cue ball look nice as stick shift knob.

 

[iacas]

As far as the balls, I seem to remember reading that the company that makes the balls for Brunswick and Aramith is called Saluc and they make the balls to each company's own specs.

Yeah, that's the bit I've heard.

Anyway, Aramith balls are at http://www.saluc.com/html/billiard/index.php?idlien=10 and I didn't see any mention of Brunswick there, but if there is such an arrangement (and I'm sure there is), it's not unheard of. Lots of companies produce similar products for someone else. It's not competition if you're being paid to make both products!

 

[TheBook]

Everytime I go to a bar I try to make off with a ball. I have a great mixture and many sets of balls consisting of different cue balls and various styles of balls. The trick is to pick out the best one on the table. Most important is the follow up. After lifting a ball that ball will be replaced with a new one. When you go back you can now get a fairly new ball. I hope no one believes this BS. The sad part is I think that some a$$holes may do this.

I have Centennials. Love the classic design. They also are color fast and are very lively.

 

[Billy_Bob]

Super Aramith Pro and an Arimith measles (red dots) cue ball.

Watch out for the rack. There are a lot of cruddy racks out there which will not rack the balls properly. I had to place a piece of masking tape on my brand new rack to push the head ball back a little to get it to rack properly.

 

[iacas]

Super Aramith Pro and an Arimith measles (red dots) cue ball.

Watch out for the rack. There are a lot of cruddy racks out there which will not rack the balls properly. I had to place a piece of masking tape on my brand new rack to push the head ball back a little to get it to rack properly.

I may use the Sardo. I started a thread here about whether it damaged tables unnecessarily and nobody had much to say about it. I see some other threads on it, though, so I'll be reading them.

 

[Barbara]

I may use the Sardo. I started a thread here about whether it damaged tables unnecessarily and nobody had much to say about it. I see some other threads on it, though, so I'll be reading them.

DO NOT USE THE SARDO!! It does do damage to the cloth of the table and here's how.

To "train" the cloth for the Sardo rack you must place a template where you'll be racking and place the balls on the template and TAP them into the cloth. Then you take away the template, put the balls back into the area, and use the Sardo rack to further push the balls into the cloth. Now you've got 15 divots in your cloth. You don't need the Sardo rack anymore. And you've created a mine field that no slow-rolled ball will ever roll straight through again.

Barbara

 

[BAZARUS]

Apologies for the slightly funny title

Anyway, I'm wondering what balls y'all use on your home table.

I just bought a set of Aramith Super ProCup TV balls. My table will be here sometime towards the end of the month or in early February.

The same here. Just wondering how much did you paid for them? I bought those at 2003 Us Open 9 Ball Championship for $100.00.

 

[iacas]

The same here. Just wondering how much did you paid for them? I bought those at 2003 Us Open 9 Ball Championship for $100.00.

A little bit more than that. Not much. From Nielsen's on eBay.

DO NOT USE THE SARDO!! It does do damage to the cloth of the table and here's how.

To "train" the cloth for the Sardo rack you must place a template where you'll be racking and place the balls on the template and TAP them into the cloth. Then you take away the template, put the balls back into the area, and use the Sardo rack to further push the balls into the cloth. Now you've got 15 divots in your cloth. You don't need the Sardo rack anymore. And you've created a mine field that no slow-rolled ball will ever roll straight through again.

See, now I've heard that several times. I've also read Jude talking about they were literally hammering things in. I've heard all of the "bad."

Racking balls causes divots. If you accept that, then the main purpose of the Sardo then becomes racking the balls in the same small divots every time. That seems to me to be a whole lot better than having a "general vicinity" where balls are racked.

This is my table. I'll rack the balls the same way every time. I've played at a pool hall and seen how hard it is to get a decent rack. The cue ball rolls around in a dime-sized divot from players racking in "roughly the same area" every time.

For $180 or even $100, you bet I wouldn't use a Sardo. But for $60, I seriously doubt that the Sardo family despises pool players enough to put out something that causes damage. Everyone speaking out against the Sardo seems to have either an unusual experience (Jude) or really no first-hand knowledge.

At this point, I'm undecided. But if I get it and the instructions tell me to rack a set of balls 10 or 15 times after tapping the head ball a few times and putting tiny dots with a permanent pen on my cloth, I'll probably use it.