SHAFT SIZE

3 pages, 10-26-09. Fast Larry Guninger, FLE POOL INC.

Size does matter, ask any good woman. It bigger better? Not without action behind it?

All the top players I knew in the late 50’s and early 60’s were playing with 11.5mm. My teachers Omaha Fats and Minnesota Fats did, so I copied what they used, ivory ferrules and red felt tip backed soft champion chandaviert tips.

2 out of 3 aint bad, they were dead wrong on two of them. The ivory ferrule is the worst you can use. It’s too hard and deflects like a mother. We have found, thinner, softer fiber ferrules deflect much less. All we had back then was Ivory, so we used, what had always been used. Golf gave up on wooded shafts, just like Tennis did on wooden rackets when better materials came along.

We finally realized that soft tips do nothing, but mushroom and wear out fast. We found out that hard tips, work best, like Triangles and Talisman M & H’s.

On these two subjects, frankly today there is really little debate among those who know.

The size of the shaft is still up in the air.

One manufacturer wrote: "The shaft will actually perform better the smaller it gets. But with our shaft, wall thickness becomes an issue, that is why we cannot warranty a shaft that is below 12.25mm diameter.
I remember when the Predator shaft first came out, and they were giving them out to all the pros to get them seen. I said, I don’t want a 12.75mm shaft, I want mine taken down to 11.5mm. They said, we can’t go below 12.50mm, our wall on our ferrule becomes so thin, and it begins to break. The main reason I stopped playing with them, even though I was getting them for free, is I did not want to go back up from 11.5 to 12.75. Make the wall lighter, thinner on the ferrule; you get less deflection, but less strength. I blew up 3 of them performing masses, one at the BCA Vegas show, which they quickly replaced and hid under their booth table. The shaft just peals back like a banana peel, in 3 or 4 equal places as the ferrule fails, drives down into the wood, blows up and peels it back. That was also aided by that area being hollow to create less front end mass for performance at the loss of strength. I quickly gave up on them and stayed with my stronger Schuler shafts, which is sadly now out of business.
I played with Ray Schuler shafts for 15 years and never ever had one blow up. I have been selling the juice shafts now for two years and we have not had a single failure from me, or any of the hundreds of customers who have bought them. So the problem, is the ferrule.
Meucci just make their ferrule thinner to gain performance on their new Black dot and they began failing and breaking in massive numbers. They said they learned how to make it thin and stronger, the truth is they just went back to making them thicker and the failures ended, but the performance of the shaft tanked. That shaft was worse than the Edsel.
For years the standard size tip has been 13mm. Joss and a few others liked to make 13.25mm and still do. A survey was done recently and found that a poll of 9000 players, professional and amateurs alike and the average tip diameter was 12.75mm. This seems to be the standard used today, along with a cue being no longer 57” long, but now 58”, and 20-21 ozs used to be used, 19ozs is today’s new standard.
Beware of standards. Example, the cue draws best at 18, follows best at 20, therefore average the two and you have 19. Bob Meucci and I both agree that the perfect weight of a cue should be 18.75. I take an 18.5 cue, install a limb saver anti vibration device on the butt which now makes it 18.75. Cue makers tend to play it safe.
It is sort of odd that billiard players with big balls, larger and heavier than a pool ball, and snooker players with small balls, smaller and lighter than a pool ball, both seem to prefer small diameter tips (in the 10 to 12 mm range), while pool players with the medium size balls tend to play with larger tips (12.75 to 13.25mm). Squirt characteristics might have been related to these trends; before the high-tech shafts were developed (e.g. Predator 1996), the only way to have a low-squirt cue was with a small tip. Could it be that 3-cushion billiards and snooker had it right, and pool had it wrong all of these years?
Snooker with the smaller ball uses mostly a 10mm tip. 3-cushion billiards using the larger heavier ball is divided, some using 11.5, some as small as 9mm. They know, the smaller tip, puts more English and spin on the ball.
Yes Mosconi used a 12.75mm tip, but the only game he played was 14.1, most of his shots were 1 to 2’ away, he used very little English, and he played on a surface that was 4 l/2 x 4 l/2’, smaller than a bar box, he kept all of his balls on one half of the table, so with this slow soft game, maybe the 12.75mm tip was right? As this game is now obsolete and 8 ball is on a 9’ table, and 9 ball is a power game, requiring massive force follows and force draws, the smaller tip is a better choice today.
Years ago, I played all the games and the top rooms has snooker tables, 3-cushion, and pool tables. I played all three games every day. I would begin with snooker to tighten my aim, then to pool, and finish up with 3-cushion. I tried to play snooker with a 10mm tip, but when I went to pool and had to jump from 10 to 13, it was like going from a pencil to a phone pole. That was one of the reasons 11.5mm was so popular back then. You could make the mental and visual transition from 10 to 11.5 better, but no way you could go to 13. I learned to play snooker with an 11mm and pool with a 11.5, 11.5 for 3-c, problems solved for me.
In 96 when the predators came out and was never comfortable moving up to the 12.75. I knew then, that was not the answer, but marketing and hype sold tons of them. I ignored all of it and stayed with my solid hard rock maple. Earl Stricklin and many top 9 ball pros play with 11.5.
Many tell me, I have been playing with 13 all my life and I could go down to 12.75 but never to 11.5. My answer to that: Bull S***. You have to want to go there, knowing you will gain a better game. So you buy the smaller shaft, and tough it out for a few days. The tip will seem like a small pencil to you. Rest assured, within a week, your mind, your eyes will adjust and it will then seem perfectly normal to you. After a week, try and go back to your old 13mm. It will look like a phone pole to you. You will wonder, how you ever made a ball with it. Once you convert to 11.5, you will never go back to 13, please trust me on this one, been there, done that one.
I went through months of experimentation to finally solve this mystery for myself and I found each step you take a 13mm down, to 12.75, to 12, to 11.5, the performance increases. I also found, it seems to stop at 11.5, going down to 11 gains you nothing from that point on. I have been telling people this for years and few listened to me. Recently Predator discovered what I have known all along, talking the Z shaft down to 11.5 increases its performance over the 314 by 11%, which the owner of the company tells me.
Meaning you can take a simple Players cue, any cue, cheap or expensive, and take the shaft down to 11.5 and it will play better and give you more English. But I then discovered how to take it beyond that, to juice it to the maximum.
Why do many report back to me, that my juice shaft actually outplays the Z shaft, who were owners of one and tested my shaft against it, and found my claims to be true.
It’s all up front, I use a Talisman H layered tip, which outperforms the lepros most put on their cues. I have a special low deflection ferrule I use, thin, but strong and one has yet to fail. I use AA hard rock maple from the UP of Michigan, I do not need to hollow out the end to make it weaker, or glue panels of wood together, one solid piece is best, and that gives the best strength and action.
The main secret is the taper; I copied my main playing shaft off of my 60’s original Balabushka.
I install a limb saver anti vibration device on the butt which I firmly believe in and use on all of my cues.
I now have a shaft that outplays all of that high tech bull **** being sold out there. If you buy one of my Adam Balabushka’s with the shaft juiced, that is any extra $89. If you send me your shaft from any cue, and want it juiced, that is $109. To order, write me at email fastlarrypool@bellsouth.net or call at 770-381-6609.
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FLE POOL INC
“Fast Larry” Guninger 770-381-6609
Email fastlarrypool@bellsouth.net

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