cue ferrules

[ken147]

Sometimes technology in sport hinders rather than enhances performance, whether its for entertainment or personal gain. In terms of snooker a good playing snooker cue is about spring of the shaft, athin walled brass ferrule and a decent tip. Its not rocket science. Obviously there are countless other variables but I think in my opinion covered the important aspects.

I've tried a blackspin on my cue and was not very impressed with it. I'll put a review of it soon.

[the nugget]

But there's nothing to "re-learn" with a different cue that maybe deflects the cueball less Gerry, as a players setup and alignment, if correct, is going to provide pretty consistent results. Snooker is all about straight lines, and so, a cue which allows the aim to remain on a straighter line (to the line of potting angle), without the need for any "extra" guesswork, has to be a winner. It will be very easy to adjust right over to something like that. The bad news is that cues in themselves are so massively variable, both in terms of shape and size, and even in density and stiffness of the shafts used within them, that to state that a given material in the ferrule of it is going to make a predictable and measurable improvement, would quite frankly be pretty optimistic at best and fairly stupid at worst.

As has been mentioned, it can be called "innovation" or "technology" but remove the mask and it's actually called marketing, only disguised as other more attractive words.

Interesting discussion here and also youve got the massive variability in the tips used on top of this. For instance go through a box of 50 and see how many keepers youll find to your liking. Each tip in the box may cause the cueball to throw slightly differently also so i believe if players have done so well all these years without tinkering there is no magic formula to this game.

Also as far as i remember Hendry saying a few years ago when he was trying to get used to his new Accurate cue, that he had some problems getting used to the cue throwing much less than his Connoisseur.

This may not have even been due to the properties the marketing spiel of the Accurate claimed just probably down to the fact that all cues throw differently and he had become used to a particular expected throw for 20yrs which now was completely different and caused him problems.

[sberry]

Agreed

these players simply have no confidence in their own ability anymore and are looking for a golden bullet. The truth is that all that great fantastic snooker we have witnessed over the last forty years has been played by great players using ash and maple cues fitted with brass ferrules and blue diamond and elkmaster tips covered in Tweetens chalk.
You need not look any further.

Spot on, absolutely.

[trevs1]

I'd agree that tips play their part in the equation and that there will be some variation in how different tips behave. However, in my experience the vast majority of players tend to prefer a tip which has at least some firmness to the contact, and once tips provide that degree of contact, there is usually "adequate grip" to allow a reasonably predictable cue ball path. From there, it becomes much easier to gauge what a particular cue is doing.

I completely agree that there is no "magic formula". The game is as much as anything about forming habits of doing (as far as is realistic) the correct things, whether that be technique, shot selection, mental / emotional application or practise routines and so on. But, one thing is for sure, the game is about judgement, and, it's this judgement which is honed over years of exposure we have as players. That same judgement eventually creates a feeling of near certainty (in very competent players) of what results we can expect from a given set of variables. Naturally, the major variable in the whole setup is the player himself, and with that in mind, it becomes easy to see just how many issues can be highlighted and picked over from one individual to another. Some will love the idea of changing to a different cue and some will be terrified of it, some will will adapt to a change not only physically but mentally too, and others will struggle with it. As for Hendry and the Acuerate cues, they did not remove the need for judgement, even though they did reduce cueball deflection to an incredibly low level. The correct choice of shot still had to be made, the point of aim / contact on the object ball and the pace of the shot still all had to be judged, and then, executed correctly to get the desired result. At the time when Hendry began using the Acuerate cue, it wouldn't be too difficult to argue that he was already going through some decline in his match performances. But, the fact still remains that he was more than able to make the fine adjustments needed to use a cue with less deflecton than he had previously been used to. I say that as a cue which has "less" deflection is a cue which reduces still further the amount of guesswork involved, and so, makes the judgement of a shot easier. Any player who has used a good reliable cue and compared it to a cue which throws the ball outrageously when applying side would be able to testify to that. Now, whether Hendry's old Powerglide cue was THAT unreliable I don't know, but I'd doubt it.

So, it isn't possible to claim that any one attribute of any cue is king and that it is more important than another. What is important is that a cue is a good balance of ALL desireable attributes, and once a player has that, the rest is down to them to make it do what they want it to do. The Acuerate cues I tried all played in a very very trustworthy way when any side was applied to the cueball, but, were stone dead when there was any need for getting spin on the ball when striking low. It felt almost impossible to screw the white more than a few feet with them, even when everything was turned up to eleven. To me, that's NOT a good balanced performing cue. I'd rather use one which had a predictably low enough level of deflection, but still retains the ability to move the white to where I need it to be without taking a forty foot runup to the shot. What we have seen / heard about cues with this or that ferrule is hearsay, and, is often about cues which have NOT been tried both with and without various ferrule types. I have no doubt that some cues may well be improved for a change of ferrule (whether it be to a composite one of some sorts, or even another brass one of better dimensions) but, to claim a ferrule in itself is able to produce exact and predictable results in EVERY cue EVERY time is misleading.

As I have said to a number of people, the only way to know for sure is to carry out extensive blind testing, but that will never happen.

[eaoin11]

I agree with Trev's post and MW was at pains to make clear that the benefits of his new ferrule/system are not just about reducing throw.

It might be that the Americans with the way they've mastered the art of marketing "new technology" in cues made such a big deal of throw/squirt/deflection simply because it's the only aspect of cueing that can actually be demonstrated fairly easily and objectively.

[poona]

I've hit a couple of centuries with an Ash shaft, brass ferrule and Elk Master tip covered in King chalk. I haven't hit a century yet since getting back into the game coming on to 6 months now after a good solid 5 years off, although on a few occasions I have came close with 70s and 80s being hit (have hit dozens of centuries in standard X and T line ups but I don't count that) Do I need to change my set up? No, I need to keep practicing and honing my technique.

The TW cue I'm now using doesn't need adjusted or changed, it's perfect for my game and it wont be long before it has knocked in it's first century much like my old Parris Traditional did which again had no fancy tips or ferrules.

Each to their own however, I don't knock anyone who enjoys toying around and experimenting with various setups. If you think it will improve your game, very often it will.. I dare you to prove it's not merely the placebo effect.

Enjoying the analysis in this thread so keep it going chaps

[damienlch]

...It felt almost impossible to screw the white more than a few feet with them, even when everything was turned up to eleven...

Interesting thread going on here, it certainly gave me much food for thought... but getting a tad heavy though... So here's a bit of comic relief... A video clip from the show "This is Spinal Tap"...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_kddYSiceg

[sberry]

It felt almost impossible to screw the white more than a few feet with them, even when everything was turned up to eleven.

Of course, if anybody else is able to screw the white back more than a few feet...... I know somebody who would struggle to even hit the white ball with a JP ultimate, gold plated blackspin ferrule and laminated koala bear skin tip, chalked with powdered tiger bones, even their guide dog agrees with me.

Should be able to screw the ball back further than that with reverse side with a £5 club cue out the bucket.