John Parris old v new

[GeordieDS]

What's the difference between the older JP cues and the new ones??
I've been told by a few people that the older ones are much better but nobody has gave any reason other than he might not make them himself but he would have trained his staff so the quality will still be there.

This isn't a thread to bash the cues either so please don't do that but i've been offered one to buy so i need to know what is different?

[Stevie1]

Dont have one but my thoughts woud be his pasion to make good cues and when you start new stuf you put your heart into it but only my thoughts

[jay686]

Don't know if it's true or not. Difficult to gauge. Maybe a reason could be,he did it all himself to begin with. Now he has minions to do parts of the process for him.

[thai_son22]

The answer just could be something as simple as quality control. If that is to be the case.

Not going to say his cues are better before compared to now as I'm sure he sells some belters now as he did before.

But some "complaints" if you want to call it that seem to be creeping up in recent times which suggests two things:

1) his cues are less consistent
2) we are getting more perculiar/stricter

I wouldnt go as far as generalising his cues by era and saying one era was better than another which in this case is old vs new. I'm sure you will find some absolute crackers in his new stuff which you would prefer over maybe his older work.

It's all opinions and suitability

[cueman]

John still selects the wood for the shafts and he grades each batch accordingly to the orders.

I guess they have a certain taper that his staff work to, I guess he has his top men work on the Ultimate range and for pros cues and the other staff work on the standard cue range.

At the end of the day you are still getting a good cue. I mean these cue makers have to start somewhere, who better to be trained by than John Parris!

As for the cues themselves, well its silly really gauging quality. Cues are subjective to the person using it, only your own opinion should count. As soon as anyone starts trying to force an opinion on you beware their agenda, as they'll probably have one!

[Cue crafty]

What's the difference between the older JP cues and the new ones??
I've been told by a few people that the older ones are much better but nobody has gave any reason other than he might not make them himself but he would have trained his staff so the quality will still be there.

This isn't a thread to bash the cues either so please don't do that but i've been offered one to buy so i need to know what is different?

The difference is stuff not worth reading about. Yarns about "red glue" which was used by Parris circa 20 odd years ago allow sellers to hype up old JP cues that they want to sell for big bucks on eBay. No doubt that some of them are amazingly good cues. Trouble is that can be said of a large number of cues, we all know every bit of wood is different and beauty is in the eye of the beholder in both playing feel and look. From a financial aspect, buying the cue you can't go far wrong, second hand value on eBay is phenomenal! As with any cue, give it a bash on the baize and see if she sings! 😉

[Neil Taperell]

I wonder what cue makers would say about the quality of ash , say compared to when they started to now .

Was it better or worse then ?

Is that the difference between the quality of new v old ?

[Essa]

Hmm has time gone on John has perfected his technique and tools have improved from that era to this era can only get better under the guidance of John. I think there is video on YouTube where they ask him if he is involved in the process which he reply yes on each stage but that doesn't mean hands on every stage.

[GeordieDS]

Cheers for the replies, i do recall now someone saying the quality of Ash is not available that was in the past, does anyone know if he uses a different supplier these days?

[Ramon]

The difference is stuff not worth reading about. Yarns about "red glue" which was used by Parris circa 20 odd years ago allow sellers to hype up old JP cues that they want to sell for big bucks on eBay. No doubt that some of them are amazingly good cues. Trouble is that can be said of a large number of cues, we all know every bit of wood is different and beauty is in the eye of the beholder in both playing feel and look. From a financial aspect, buying the cue you can't go far wrong, second hand value on eBay is phenomenal! As with any cue, give it a bash on the baize and see if she sings! ��

+ 10 to this !!

[Ramon]

I wonder what cue makers would say about the quality of ash , say compared to when they started to now .

Was it better or worse then ?

Is that the difference between the quality of new v old ?

just compare the amount of cue makers worldwide in 80's ,, with current time.
it is a question of supply and demand , imo.

[sanman]

just compare the amount of cue makers worldwide in 80's ,, with current time.
it is a question of supply and demand , imo.

Good point

Back in the Day when there few cuemakers to be compared to JP was top dog. Nowadays there are too many cuemakers to choose from and most if not all have left JP choking in their dust in my opinion. He simply hasn't kept up in terms of build quality, playability etc in my opinion, ultimates maybe being the exception.

[Ramon]

Good point

Back in the Day when there few cuemakers to be compared to JP was top dog. Nowadays there are too many cuemakers to choose from and most if not all have left JP choking in their dust in my opinion. He simply hasn't kept up in terms of build quality, playability etc in my opinion, ultimates maybe being the exception.

More cue makers today who can provide a good cue as well as JP does . Agreed .
The trouble is , it has become more difficult to buy good quality ash , in comparison with 80's , imo.
And that , because of increased demand . The more cue makers , the more wood required .

[narl]

I would say that build quality can be ropey, its not uncommon to see Ultimate's with wonky splicing. I remember pottr's maple cue which had the veneer bleeding into the ebony which was a weird one. When your tag line is "the ultimate in cue craftsmanship" you're opening yourself up to criticisms if your build quality isn't up-to scratch. Its not like wonky splicing is a new thing, seen plenty of old cue's from JP which also had uneven splices so its not as if this is a new thing that's down to him not personally hand splicing every cue that goes through his workshop.

Its probably more down to the daft demand from Asia that cues just seem to get sent out in whatever their finished state is regardless of how "off" some of the butt "decoration" may be. It's already been mentioned that they quite recently stopped working on other brand cues, they only do alterations on their own cues now so obviously they were feeling the pinch in regard to getting hammered with work.

I will say though i owned a special and an exclusive and their splice work was even all the way around, so no complaints from my time of ownership.

[louise sheldon]

The trend at the moment is for as near as possible perfect arrows , this originally was started by the cue collectors and has snowballed to the point most people want that more than the playability of a cue , a lot of the time the cues with even arrows are actually short grain and therefore weaker, you can tell if cue is short grain by looking at the side grain which should really run the full length of the cue and not diagonally giving loads of backward arrows on back of cue most of the best shafts don't have even arrows and may even have a boat or two in the grain , that's a oval pattern.
The ash we get today is not really any different to twenty years ago and if you have seen as many black plate H&O and ultimate cues as I have you will know this .
Parris cues have not changed in quality they are as good as they have always been and the red glue cues are just that red glue that bled through the veneers and did not look as good as the glue now being used and no John did not make every red glue cue as he has had skilled employees working for him well before glue changed .
Hope this helps