All About Cue Tips

February 12, 2024
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Do you think that your choice in tips is the right choice or simply politically correct? What I mean by politically correct is, is your choice of direction controlled by your peers’ opinion or some professional player you know, or is it based on fact? By the end of this article, you should be able to answer this question for yourself.

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What are the differences in pool cue tips? ##

As you probably already know, you have very soft single-piece animal skin tips from various types of animals (elk, cow, water buffalo, and cape buffalo) to tough single-piece animal skins. There are also laminated tips ranging anywhere from three to fifteen layers. Using animal skins and tannages, the laminated prizes range from soft to extremely hard. The result is a myriad of confusing choices. I want to unmuddy the water for you somewhat. These variables can impact power, accuracy, and your sight picture.

First, let’s assume that you already know that the shape or radius of the tip is of utmost importance and must be maintained at all times during gameplay. That essential shape I just mentioned is the radius of a dime (roughly) or a “0.375” radius. In other words, hold a dime edgewise up to your tip and look over the top... If it does not match the shape or radius of a dime on the top of your information, you’ve already got a problem.

When the tip strikes the ball, the portion of the information that takes the force is no more than an eighth of an inch off-center in all directions. This is true regardless of whether you’ve struck the cue ball a sixteenth off-center or a full tip off-center. This radius generates the force, irrespective of where it is struck, to the center of the tip and down through the center of your cue. Soft tips create more distortion than harder tips. In other words, a larger area of the information makes contact and wraps around the cue ball in the case of soft lead.

This may give you more tip confidence, particularly if you’re a beginner, because you will miscue less, despite having a sloppy stroke; but, the price you will pay is less power and a whole lot more deflection of the cue ball because you have moved all of the tips to one side of the cue ball with virtually no penetration. On the other hand, hard information will focus the energy in a much smaller area at impact and give you a higher degree of penetration. When I speak of penetration, I mean the force being directed to the cue ball under the direction the cue is being swung or pointed, and that force penetrates the cue ball in the order that the shaft or line is being driven. As a bonus, a harder tip lasts longer.

## What about miscueing with hard cue tips? ##

The simple fact of the matter is that the small, glasslike particles of chalk, which cause the friction, are held higher up on the surface on a hard tip so that they will penetrate deeper into the surface of the cueball at impact. Soft information allows more particles to come into contact because of its increased tip surface at the mark; however, though more particles are in connection with the cue ball, it does not penetrate the cue ball as deeply and therefore creates less friction per particle. Bottom line: You have the choice of either more particles penetrating less or fewer particles penetrating more… The net total clash is about a trade-off. Whether the tip you choose is one single piece of hiding or laminated multiple pieces of hiding, the key issue is that more penetration means more accuracy, more power, and tremendously less cue ball deflection and negative effects on your sight picture. As a side note: You’ve probably noticed if you’ve played much that a tip plays its best just before it has to be changed. This is because it has been pounded enough through constant play to make the information denser (harder in all areas).

## What does Meucci Originals do with this information? ##

After testing every tip on the market and measuring its resultant power and deflection variation, we have found that a hard angle with even harder outside edges around the circumference will perform the best. Harder outer edges so that the energy is directed into the cue will be focused more towards the center of the shaft while at the same time keeping the exterior walls of the tip from breaking down. There are only two ways to get this result: 1—a hard water buffalo tip . or 2. Compress the end of your choice as hard as possible, then shape it to a dime radius, pound the outside edges to harden the circumference further, and reshape that area to be once again a dime radius.

We take the latter and former choices at Meucci Originals with the well-known Le Professional tips or hard water buffalo tips. I hope I haven’t caused you even more confusion. The choice should now be simple: your choice should be based on knowledge and experience instead of the day’s fashion.